240. Mr. Ashleysdad

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann and Alex Cox. This week's challenge, Stop Cursing.

MerlinHello?

AlexGood morning.

MerlinGood morning, Alexandra. How are you?

AlexOh, I'm a delight. How are you?

MerlinYou are a delight. You're a perfect delight.

AlexWow. Did I just compliment myself? What's happening?

MerlinYou should compliment yourself every day, whether you deserve it or not.

AlexHuh. Interesting.

MerlinOkay. Well, you know, save it for the show.

AlexI've got the challenge spreadsheet open right now.

MerlinI think you're delightful. Everyone says so.

AlexI've been told the same about you.

MerlinThank you. What is that noise? Is that your Vesta board spinning?

AlexI know. I know that we have to talk about Vestabort. I don't know what your initial.

MerlinI don't either. I don't know what yours is either. I think I think this is going to be a complicated discussion for me and you. It's 2021, Alex, and I'm trying to be better as a person.

AlexOh, why? It's not worth it.

MerlinReally? Don't judge my typing.

AlexNo, no. That was.

MerlinCompliment yourself. Oh, you're in the in the doc. Pre-PC. I stared at where is it? Oh man, we've got to clean up this document. I stared at B514 for at least three minutes this morning. And then I added 0514

as a note.

Alex0514.

MerlinYeah, there you go. You got it. It's like watching somebody play Battleship. You got it. Because I like this. This is the challenge. We're talking about the challenge. Hi, everybody. What can you do by Friday? TK, be nicer. And I had a train of thought and I lost it. This is going to be relevant in a few minutes on our program as I share some information with you. Because I think I'm losing my mind. And in a good way, in a generative way.

AlexI mean, I literally have a tiny bit of it that's gone.

MerlinSay what?

AlexOh, my brain. Sorry for interrupting. What? What, what, what? Yeah.

MerlinI'm sorry, there's pre-PCs in mix. I can't hear anything. Let's start the show.

AlexOh, are you using the, what is it? Mega Zoom. Mega Zoom.

MerlinOh, wait, I am using Mega Zoom, but the pre-PC only affects my cans.

AlexOh, all right.

MerlinAnd I spent three minutes, at least three minutes this morning, refixing Mega Zoom, and I think I figured out what was wrong with my level, which was I had it set too low.

AlexOh, dear. Yeah.

MerlinYou know, another thing I want to talk about, why does nobody like my fancy file? They always want my raw file. Why can't I ever send people my fancy file? Nobody likes my fancy ones. It's because it's compressed and it's insulting to an editor to receive a pre-compressed file. Be honest.

AlexI don't know. I'm always fine with MP3s from people because I'm like, this is going. No, no, no.

MerlinI have. Okay. Okay. I have. I'm confused.

AlexHelp me.

MerlinThis pre-PC is a mess. I cannot hear anything you're saying.

AlexAll right. Merlin. explain what is the fancy file oh that's better thank you can you do that for an hour and a half i can are you are you trying to not laugh at this dumb voice i'm turning i'm turning up the volume in my okay okay all right i you know what this is this is probably going to be my last tweet but much like puns now now i this is probably going to be your last tweet this will probably be my last tweet oh like your death tweet funny voices are the most under appreciated form of

comedy i think i agree like before we had language like it we had voices or sounds and it was more

Merlinlike and one guy was like and then like what the fuck with that dude gronk you sound like marge's sisters. Taco box. Connie Chung. I totally agree. I'm going to surprise you with the Connie Chung calendar.

Taco box. Remember that one where Homer goes out and gets the bowling ball with his name on it? So you know it's from me. Those are all funny voices.

I totally agree. And I'm living it. Are you writing all this down? Because I don't know what I was talking about. I'm having a really strange day. I think I'm losing my mind, Alex, in a generative way.

AlexI've, uh, all right, strange days. But first, fancy mix. And did you see I switched to my, well, quote unquote, quiet keyboard. The one that doesn't upset people. Ooh, that sounds really nice, actually. All right.

MerlinWhat was that? What was that? That's a quiet keyboard?

AlexOh, the Apple whatever, the basic.

MerlinOh, I'm using the Apple whatever, too. I use the one. I like the number pad. It's not fashionable like the number pad. I like it.

AlexReally? I'm I see. I really enjoy the number pad. But if anybody sees me using one, that is where, you know, the touch typing goes absolutely out the window. And I'm like, like, this is this is how it is. Like, oh, gosh.

And that's why I get someone to do my taxes. It's just hard.

MerlinOkay, because you never learn how to do like a 10-key. You're not like a 10-key shooter. Okay.

AlexNo.

MerlinI just want to say the thing it buys me, and I'm still kind of getting used to this setup, but it buys me seven extra buttons.

AlexOh, interesting.

MerlinYou know, on the F keys? Because on this one, I don't know. I like the stuff that's wired for Apple things mostly. Like I love Play, Pause, Next Track. volume. I love all that stuff. But F13 through 19 are now keys that I have hooked up to something in Better Touch Tool. And I love it. F19, that upper right corner boy. Open my downloads folder.

Oh. Let's see what else we got on here. We got that. What's 18? 18 is nothing. 17, I'm not sure what it did. 16 opens my mail app 15 opens my task paper 14 opens drafts 13 opens MVLT. Do you

Alexever kind of play keyboard roulette with something like keyboard maestro or magic yeah yeah it's like you just have one assigned as a dick pic and it's like all right if I mess this up. Is dick

Merlinpic like when it's always called dick pic but you give it different functionality

Alexwell no it just

Merlindoes it to get a dick pic send a dick pic or like fave a dick pic.

AlexOh, gosh. Oh, interesting.

MerlinSee, now you're going to want those seven extra buttons. I know. Well, exactly.

AlexIf I wanted to teach myself how to touch type with a number with the number pad and let's say just use the number keys as basically a stream deck, but without the pretty pictures. Oh, I was talking

Merlinabout F keys, but you're blowing my

Alexmind. But both, but both.

MerlinYes. Okay. Let me ask your question um thank you uh first time keyboard i if i wanted to to like for example i put my phone on my um on my old keyboard my old but you know my previous keyboard my das keyboard i want to say 12

Alexf12 wait i i think if a keyboard is over a decade old both in manufacturing and being in oh you're

Merlinsaying it's old in every sense it's like the old ways okay yes uh-huh uh-huh it's the old gods when people say things like my oldest friend and then they laugh because they're saying i'm not saying you're my friend who's the english is a strange language alex i don't know did you write

Alexdown funny voices i i wrote down funny voices and strange day raw versus fancy strange day um f keys

Merlinum but i used to have and i kind of miss it is uh is i believe it was i want to say f12 was um paste in my phone number because you know there's a lot of places you go where they want your phone number yes i'm i'm a little bit weird not weird as in like a security person but like i i think sometimes the autofill stuff in the browser can be a nuisance you know when it's trying to fill in my info for things and like sometimes i shut off that tick box in safari oh interesting so you

Alexdon't do you use the one password plugin i also don't like it remembering fields

Merlini wish i could shut off spelling the fixed spelling as you type i wish i could shut that off in some fields which i back in the day probably could do you could probably do that like on firefox but i don't like getting an array of pop downs and then i have to like work against what it's trying to put in there it's like no no no stop stop helping me stop helping me it's like having somebody try to finish your sentences for you you know what i mean yeah i think that's

Alexwhy all of the mac people including myself are so horny for the obsidian app because it is a like note slash research slash whatever the fuck uh in markdown and it's an electron app however the folks who make it are mac users and they're like listen we we know we know we need to make a living doing this so we are going to try we're fighting electron for for you uh so thank you for your service obsidian and and craft and all the oh i have to say ubuntu more more intuitive

than windows why are we talking about computers this is so boring i don't even know what you wrote down anymore but it's all interesting to me merlin you said that you had a you were having

Merlina strange day and so am I raw versus fancy oh I want to hear about that raw versus fancy yeah uh oh you know you know it's interesting if you stop thinking you say keyboard you say mouse you touchpad think about input device what I want in an input device and that's what we bring in something like a stream deck I saw a thing uh advertised somewhere I looked it up on Amazon oh yeah so oh please write down a filling in uh fields for me could you write that down please Okay. Filling. We should get, we should get an intern who can do this for us. I don't,

I don't want to do the emotional labor, ask you the emotional labor of writing my thoughts down. No, I think, uh, you're the Boswell to my Johnson. Be honest.

AlexWell, no, no, no. This is, uh, I'm, I, uh, I can be the grace of your Johnson.

MerlinThe grace of my Johnson. And also with you. I love that.

I love my pad, but it feels a little bit like human skin. So I'm working with that. I have to keep washing my hands.

AlexMine's more like cotton than Absorbi. Oh, wait, wait. All right. Filling in fields, washing hands. All right.

MerlinI also use a lot of rubbing alcohol. I use 90% rubbing alcohol to clean things.

AlexOn what? Bodies?

MerlinYes, because you should be very, very clean. if you don't have a rash or not clean. I turn off my keyboard. I turn off my input devices. And some kinds of things that, like for example, like the Stream Deck, I would never clean that with anything but whoosh. But with things like the keyboard and the touchpad, I do use rubbing alcohol on that. Not on my screens ever. Not a caveman.

AlexOh, I just realized I definitely, if not rubbing alcohol, this is definitely, I think this was prescribed by Dr. Don.

MerlinYou have prescription alcohol?

AlexMy prescription Purell hand sanitizing wipe kills 99.99% of illness-causing germs.

MerlinYou're prescription hand wipes?

AlexNo.

MerlinI love putting the word prescription. If you put the word prescription, I've said this to my friends on the United States program. If you put the word prescription in front of almost any noun, it becomes funnier.

AlexIt is. You see, I was going to say it. It's just a noun. It's just a noun.

MerlinOh, you were making fun. You're funnying. So if you take a great word, one of the five great words, there's five great words. Let's see if I can remember them off the dome. Robot monkey sandwich pants. There's a few of them. Try putting prescription in front of any of those. Would you do that for – this is not fair because those are great words. I can't remember the fifth. You got monkey robot pants sandwich.

AlexMonkey robot's pants sandwich.

MerlinNow put the word prescription in front of any one of those. Actually, all four, but take a minute. Okay. Start with pants.

AlexPrescription monkey. Prescription pants. Yeah.

MerlinPrescription pants. Is that funny? I feel like that's funny.

AlexThat is funny.

MerlinWhat if you ended up you had to go to CVS to pick up a monkey your doctor wanted you to have? What would that be?

Alexuh in well i would say an emotional support it's a prescription monkey okay if your doctor said you

Merlinneed 80 more robot in your life please go to the walgreens now what's that robot what's that called

Alexuh a horny my horny robot okay no the prescription robot oh it's gonna be that's gonna be a thing um all right all right i'm sorry uh i enjoy the in your pants post scripts wait what's the preposition like you put uh did this might have been after your time this is like a chinese cookie thing where you add in bed yeah yeah yeah yeah what's called a chinese cookie right is that racist i i don't even know see maybe maybe it was it is and it because it changed oh maybe it was

because of catholic school was in in my pants even though it's too close to transubstantiation Yeah, yeah. Like, I wonder if it was like, ah, the ketchup and the rye in my pants. Oh, no, that does make it a little dirty.

MerlinOh, you're talking about like you go to an Occidental restaurant.

AlexYeah, a separate piece in my pants.

MerlinLike, it's Western, not Eastern. I see what you're saying, and they give you the cookie. It's like actually multiple wafers. It's like what Peggy Hill has to learn about transubstantiation because she wants to fool them into thinking that she's a Catholic nun at the Catholic school. Yes. And the kids are asking her about transubstantiation. Spoilers. Whether there's pets in heaven. And that's a very, it's a very fun episode.

AlexAnd you're talking a fun episode. Are you saying there's a fun episode of the Handmaid's Tale?

MerlinI'm not watching the current season, but I heard they had a little switch them up. That was in a brutal episode, but there was a switch them up.

AlexOh, so both brutal and fun.

MerlinBut they they've been so like in the advertisements for this and I hear these in podcasts. I hear the lady who's not Margot Martindale. Oh, and out. She's not character actor. She's character actress Ann Dowd. And character actress Ann Dowd will say, oh, in this season of, because apparently, I don't know, she's my late mother-in-law. But she says something like, oh, you know, there's a thing that happens this season. FYI, something we've been hoping can happen for June has happened. I think in the previous episode, this happened, right? She gets away, right?

AlexWell, I guess.

MerlinBut then, but then, but then, but then.

AlexIf you haven't seen, well, if you haven't seen the poster of it.

MerlinSorry, you know what? Never mind, never mind.

AlexNo, no, no. I don't know. It's the.

MerlinI already said it, so I don't think I can take it back. She gets away. She gets away, but then they catch her. Right.

AlexI don't. I actually don't remember. I got through the first season and a half and I'm like, I can't.

MerlinOh, wait. So you're not watching the current season is what you're telling me.

AlexNo, I can't. There's only so. I had to stop watching Grey's Anatomy.

MerlinOh, my God. This season is so bad.

AlexI mean.

MerlinIt's extremely bad.

AlexI just don't want to I don't want to watch people die of COVID in the hospital like I get to

MerlinI know and everybody goes in like the fairy boat hat like going to meet her on her death beach it's all so weird I like fairy boat though I missed him

Alexyeah

MerlinMerlin why

Alexhe's pretty why are you having a weird day

Merlinoh I don't know I think voices are funny and I'll tell you where it comes up a lot for us this is a rip from the headlines is so one way don't tell her I said this but one way I tricked my kid into watching something I know that she'll like is I find an angle yeah this happens a lot and I'm not going to bring up chocolate and Toy Story because she says I should stop talking about that but you know it is true it was true of chocolate it was true of Toy Story there was a day that you didn't like the thing and she's like I don't like Toy Story that much now

But I'm like, okay, you were only obsessed with it for like six years. Don't try to – don't get all hot topic on me, cool kid. She's wearing one of her jumpsuits today. She looks like she's in The Clash.

But the reason I say that is – can I just say Charlie Day? Charlie Day. And so she's seen, of course, we're all just obsessed with this terrible program right now.

AlexYay!

MerlinOh, yeah. Well, I go back with this show and then –

AlexIt's just the implication.

Merlinyou mean because of the implication

Alexit's just because of the implication because of the implication they're just my tools it's my tools

MerlinI like to bind and be bound that's the high school reunion that's a good one okay you guys we're going to do by Friday we're going to talk about It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia for a second okay but Charlie I mean one way I think I got a little at least interested is I and I think I've told you this but I showed her I feel like the scene that where the show first grabbed me and I told you about this, it's the one where Mac and Dennis are playing basketball and Charlie comes up and he wants to play and they say, you're a good referee, but you can't play.

And then just the moment when Mac says, no, no, I think Dennis says, Charlie, are you the Mad Munchkin? And Mac goes, Charlie, do you represent the Lollipop Guild? And then they have this ad hoc competition on who can do the Munchkin dance better. And it's like watching the Bluth try to do a chicken. Do you represent the lollipopkins?

I'm Mad Munchkin, Mad Munchkin. Anyway, we talked about that here. Charlie Day, can I just say? Charlie Day, his voice. Because now you can hear me doing it. Because I've watched so much of this terrible program.

AlexFantastic voice. Fantastic writer. Just fantastic, adorable man.

MerlinAnd he's so cute. And she already had an improbable crush on Sam Rockwell. And now that has kind of pivoted. Because Charlie Day is very Sam Rockwell in a lot of ways. As long as he's not talking. But he's got dance moves. You know he can play that keyboard.

AlexHe's Dan Rockwell. Am I?

MerlinHe's really talented.

AlexWait. Dan or Sam? Who's Dan Rockwell?

MerlinWhat did I say? Did I say Dan Rockwell?

AlexDid you say Dan or Sam? Hold on.

MerlinI might have said Dan Rockwell. But his brother Sam Rockwell that's in all those movies?

AlexYeah. Yeah. I don't know.

MerlinBut here's the thing. So here's what I did. And so last night, you know, you get in a mood sometimes. In the same way, I don't know, like ladies who are pregnant, like, you know, famously want these kind of odd foods or odd food pairings. Look, I knew a lady who, there's a wonderful dish in the state of Georgia called Brunswick stew, and it's really good, but she would crave Brunswick stew at least a couple times a week, and her husband knew she was going to crave it, knew she was going to woof it down, and knew she was going to barf prodigiously. But it did not make her crave Brunswick stew.

If you get a chance, no, I don't want to associate it. It's like SpaghettiOs, like once you make the association with barf, you know? but sometimes you're just in a mood and last night I was in a mood and I was like, God, I hate all this cable news. I hate all of this. I'm going to turn on, make sure I'm going to throw to these nice Siri balls and I want to hear something that's got like really good audio. I want to have an audio experience before dinner.

AlexOh.

MerlinThis is very boring, but it's my life.

AlexNo, go on, go on.

MerlinI watched The Fiddler on the Roof. Interesting. I've never seen the movie. When I was 12, I learned to play some of the songs

Alexon our home organ. First play I ever saw. Oh, really? Like in a room? Yes, yes. In a high school auditorium. I saw my babysitter's production. That's where you learned to

Merlinbitty-ditty all day. Now I bitty-ditty all day. And then I thought, okay, sometimes I just want to do some Mad Max. And I thought, oh, you know, Pacific Rim, which minute by minute, I found myself screaming by the end of this movie. This is easily the most criminally underrated film of the last 10 years. Why did this film not get a better reception? Why don't people freak out about how good Pacific Rim is? It's such, it's exactly, the movie knows, it does the Ebert thing, right?

That movie knows exactly what it wants to be. And it does it so well. So, okay, so she's seen, she's seen, obviously, Charlie's in all the episodes, Sonny, but she's seen the one, have you ever seen the one where he gets the intelligence pill?

AlexOh, oh yes. We talked about this last week. Flowers for Chargy.

MerlinChargy, wow. Oh, yeah, we did Flowers for Charlie. But as with other things, sometimes you go like, I bet he got him to be in this because he was working on that.

AlexOh, was that the same time? That's very funny.

MerlinI wonder, well, because he, first of all, like I said, God, I repeat myself a lot and repeat myself. And so we know that Guillermo del Toro is Pappy McBoyle in a very funny performance. And then, you know, the uptight English guy. And they're such a fun comedy pair. so I knew I said come in here I want to show you something and she came in and I unpaused so there's a scene where not Chris Hemsworth from the motorcycle show is talking to Mako talking to the woman and then you hear this

voice coming in and it's Charlie and the stiff English guy Charlie's voice is always funny it's always funny in Pacific Rim

Alexit's always funny in Philadelphia

Merlinhis exasperated voice And then, of course, in that episode where he gets the intelligence pill, he develops – he thinks he can't walk. Remember, he has to be in the wheelchair. He has the stick to walk around and he develops an English accent because he's so intelligent now. I love that show.

AlexHave you – is there – like I feel like I've never heard Charlie's real voice or have known – because his name is Charlie Mick –

MerlinCharlie Day, right?

Alexoh yes yes wait no charlie day is the uh i never know if it's the human or the character oh geez

Merlincharlie day i'm having a weird day charlie i want to say charlie day charlie work is his last name

Alexwork charlie work no yeah right oh god his wikipedia picture is the day of course it's the

Merlinday man so anyway i showed her i showed her that and she was in and she was in and you know she does that thing with me that's how i got it so anyway that's how i got my daughter to watch Pacific Rim. And she loved it. I loved it. Of course, by the end, like I say, I'm screaming, this is such a good movie. Oh, he looks so cute. He's the day man in the photo.

AlexAnd so then you moved on to the family-friendly show, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. So... Are you going to head to Archer next?

MerlinI mean... Because of the implication, actually, that we've... Okay. I'll save it for the after show. Alex, Alex, where do people find the after show?

AlexOh, well, you can go to our Patreon, which has the after show at giveusyourfuckingmoney.com and there you can give us your fucking money if you want to have a whole second Dubai Friday every week where I gossip about the speed of my internet oh why should people spend money on us Merlin? I don't I don't know because Merlin man's very

Merlintalented. Well I mean And on the face of it, that seems like a good thing. I actually think about that all the time. Oh, no, I think about that too. But, you know, this is – so your problem is you're stuck with me, and I'm always how I am. And there are things that I will find myself sort of controversially admitting twice or three times a year. And, you know, one of those controversial things is I don't want everybody to listen to this show. I want the people that I like to listen to this show. And I wouldn't mind if the people that I like tell people they think would enjoy it.

And in the same way, the Pacific Rim succeeds by being exactly the movie that it wants to be, I think. I enjoy a podcast that knows what it is. And this is not for everybody. And that's the idea. I don't know why I suddenly became very sincere.

AlexI don't know either. But it's very true.

MerlinBut if you like whatever this is, you might also like the after show. Because first of all, there's more of that. You get a second heaping helping of Alexander Cox. You get double Cox. And then, boy, you probably never get sick of that, huh? Just like me and like the magician.

Magical cocks. And so that's my feeling on that. Because, you know, I used to bust a gut about this kind of thing when I talk about creative work. And it's probably because I was on too much Adderall. But I do think about those things. And I worry about people who cut muscle because they decide that they don't like the thing that the thing is. And they try to do something else. And then if you start making a thing that you don't like anymore, if you start making a thing that you don't laugh at, this is a controversial POV, Alex. I think that's a big problem.

AlexAll morning, I've been thinking about this. Oh, we'll see the challenge sheet.

MerlinWell, nobody laughs less than a professional comedian, right? They're very unhappy people, by and large. You've met a lot of them.

AlexYes. It is the worst to hang out. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, improv people. I'm sorry. Please. Please. No, I'm sorry.

MerlinWhat? What are you doing? What are you doing? Are you stepping on your certainty?

AlexI am stuck on my uncertainty.

MerlinStepping, stepping.

AlexStepping. No, no, no, no. Okay, hold up. Have you ever, you've hung out with many funny people, like you just said, and it is very difficult to hang out in a room with a comedian sometimes because.

MerlinI had a transformative experience at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival. Go on. I've told you this. I'm sorry. I won't come back to it. Write that down. But no, I've been around a lot of them. Go ahead. Go on.

Alexqueen all right i'll sound i'll sound off uh no i've been struggling with those a lot lately and i know that i am not an improv comedian uh oh side side side oh what no no no no no but all but all cocks over here no but uh the it's it's just hanging out in a group of stand-up comedians

is very different than hanging out with a group of improvisers because comedians yeah it's very strange because comedians are i mean you've i guess we've both hung out with professionals Oh, that's weird. But but I don't know. It's just such a different experience and a different form of comedy. And both make me uncomfortable to be around any green green room.

MerlinI mean, it's terrifying. And like if you're a person who enjoys does anybody remember laughter? Like if you're somebody like me who's like, well, it's I'm not trying to make cool jokes. I'm trying to make jokes. I'm just doing and enjoying sort of what comes naturally to me. Like I come, I come by my sense of humor, honestly, because I'm a lot like my late father. He had really fun taste in comedy and he had a kind of a weird sense of humor given the time. And I, I, I'm, but the thing is, I feel like I'm, you know, like a, I'm a ship without a flag in the sense that, oh no, how can I put this?

Okay. All right. Not about me, about others. Let's make it about others. No, let's make it about me, which is like, I just think, I think fun is fun. And like the idea that I mean, I don't know if it's it's difficult to say, Alex, because the people who become, especially as you say, stand up comics or comedy writers, the kind of people who get into that, it's like, well, first of all, a lot of them.

AlexWait, wait, wait. Stand up isn't just people saying jokes.

MerlinThey just go up and make jokes on the spot.

AlexThey make it. Oh, wow. The magic is gone.

MerlinAll people who are in comedy, not all, many people in comedy professionally are pretty damaged. A lot of people, like your class clown at your college, that person was probably pretty damaged.

AlexHashtag yes, all comedians.

MerlinYes, all comedians. Oh, no.

AlexYes. Sorry.

MerlinI have not made that many women watch me masturbate.

But the point is, fun is fun, you know? And, yeah, so anyway, I don't know. I was at this comedy festival with the You Look Nice Today guys and was, you know, elbowing around with a lot of, you know, comedy types. It's a comedy festival, including this guy who, like, Simpson and other people were like, oh, God, you've got to see this guy. And you've got to see this guy. He's like, oh, my God, he's so funny. he's so funny

he's so funny and like he is he's like Nathan Fielder but way less charming and not funny like backstage he's most he's very I don't think I don't think he is a spectrum-y guy but he comes off very spectrum-y and I mean it's kind of like what you like sort of like Mr. Robot kind of feeling Rami Malek's character where you're like oh man you're you're not you're not laughing or anything and it's like I don't know but it was I could live with the fact, the sad fact, that it's like I guess when people find out about kayfabe and people find out that wrestlers are actually like unusually generous people because they have to make sure nobody gets hurt like pro wrestlers.

Right. You know what I mean? Oh, man, you don't actually beat each other's ass in the locker room. It's like, no, we're, you know, actors. It's a fun thing we do. You know what I mean? But like it's the people who must have enjoyed humor at some point in their life never seemed to laugh. But the other thing is the one some of the ones I met at that event.

It was real infighting, real backstabby. Just everybody was so envious of everybody else. If there was a characteristic to describe a lot of these people who make something like a living, making people laugh. One of the most common things I felt was just an ungenerosity of spirit about other people. and it was I was like oh because there was a time like you know when I thought god you look nice today it's so fun to do I wonder if there's a way we could ever like it wasn't even a thought of like make a living but it was more like we should take this seriously and do something with it

you know and you know it would be nice to make money but like let's think bigger than like can we get ads on our podcast about dead Estelle Getty and more like well you know what would it look like if we wanted to do more stuff right and and then i was like i asked myself the merlin man question really you know one of those like what do you want 10 times more of and i was like oh so i'm kind of bummed i guess i would get used to this having to spend time with people like this like all the downside of being the opening act in a local band along with all the downside like as

Alexin like this is good exposure kind of thing yeah yeah you'll get more value out of this anyway

MerlinI don't know. I just think fun is fun. And like, that shouldn't be, that should not be anathema. We should be able to enjoy whatever our dumb bullshit is.

AlexI mean, that's sort of this paradox of, well, actually, I've been thinking about the Merlin, not the Merlin man question, but the Merlin man, that's fine for Merlin statement slash like slur that people, not slurp. I just started with Dan Benjamin

Merlinbecause in that interview, Dan can't bear to say, my feeling in retrospect after many years working with Dan is that it's not in his nature to say I'm really envious of what you won't put up with in life. So that comes out and he's like, wow, a lot of people are going to say that's fine from Rowan. Really? A lot?

AlexA lot of people? Really? Different. It's almost like there's new on it's every human being people contain multitudes uh but along with what's fine for merlin it's for me it's like what can alex survive and i don't even mean that in a dark way but it's in what in what like uh in what aspect of your life it uh it it like how can one survive with

and make a living while still feel like if they can or should keep their soul or or if they should even do a job that they love so so caution about unintentionally getting into a line of work

Merlinthat requires you a priori to be somebody whom you feel you are not or or to become somebody

Alexwhom you would not want to become correct is that it uh or or um how to get out of something that or not to get out of but um like let go of the person oh god who do i sound like tim ferris

Merlinbut like letting go of the no no no that's okay we're bad we're balancing the madness of the beginning of this we still we still haven't talked about my uh my dementia proof house uh we haven't talked about the board we still have a lot of comedy so please please don't leave please don't leave we're going to give you back to the comedy after this uh brief few moments of

Alexsincerity well the um people who that like the feelings or or might be over here uh oh yeah

Merlinyou're right don't homogenize our audience from a distance i thought we were not going to do that don't homogenize people not you not you the other people bad people yeah yeah um i'm hashtag yes all

Alexnuances um the oh excuse me octothorpe i apologize but let's say you become the person you do want to be and then it's you decide to once again grow as a human being and not drastically change who you are or maybe yes drastically change who you are but it's like you know what sure that maybe that's fine for merlin or that's fine for alex but is that you know why is that fine for merlin and

And this seems so obtuse.

MerlinNo, I don't think it is. But, I mean, this is before your time. But Dire Straits had this song called Money for Nothing. And it's supposedly a song. You've certainly heard the song and seen the very sort of, you know, the weird 3D graphics video because it's from 1985 or whatever. But anyway, Mark Knopfler says he wrote that song supposedly based on a conversation he overheard at an appliance store. where something like the words that became that song, right?

So it's two guys walking around saying, that ain't working. That's the way you do it. You make your money on the MTV, right? You get your money for nothing and your chicks for free. And anyway, so he thought that was funny. He wrote a song. But let's leave out that that's fine for whomever, that that's fine for insert variable. It's more like you really do kind of sound like the guys in the Money for Nothing video that have become rather expert at diagnosing the unearned agency of people who have the temerity to have agency, if I can say.

And that brings me right back to another line, which is, okay, what's going to be fine for you? Like starving African child. That's all I'm saying.

AlexWell, but also, how to make temerity a good noun, I guess. When does boldness, I don't know. What does temerity even mean? Like temerity, deafen.

MerlinOh, I'm using just a 75-cent word to say. You could just even say if you wanted to.

AlexExcessive confidence or boldness. Okay, yeah. Vocab class.

Merlinhelps. Well, here's another way to look at the way that I'm trying to use that word is me and you with our octothorpe problems, which of course are not problems because I want you to know there's a child starving in Africa. And so the fact that the X-Acto knife that I ordered, that I was kind of excited to get on Sunday evening and it said they're two stops away and stuff like that. So then I look outside, there's nothing happening. And then it says it's been delivered. So like you do, I go downstairs and it hasn't been delivered. And I go check on

the thing. And it says it was delivered and was handed directly to the receptionist.

AlexI love that one. That's my favorite.

MerlinI love that one too. You're not even going to pretend that you tried. That's fine. It's a hard job.

AlexThis residential address.

MerlinFor me too, I shared that with a couple of people just because when something like that happens, it is extremely funny because now you're, I'm in a Terry Gilliam thing where I've got to go and there is no way to contact hardly anybody. You can go to those, you know, secret 800 number sites. But if you follow the route of doing, of trying to go to Amazon to say it's a Sunday afternoon at the home where I live. And there is neither a front desk nor receptionist. You don't want to be snarky about it, but just like, where do I begin to like have the conversation about this thing?

And it's like, that's a few bucks, but this is the point. The point is it is only a few books and, and, and I'm boxed. And I'm bitching about it, which seems incredibly privileged. But mainly I thought it was, I did actually think it's funny. And, but I'm trying to bring this back to what we're talking about here. That's temerity. You and me and our Octothorpe not problems, we're having the temerity to say, you know, is it okay that if I pay, if I did pay double to get it delivered faster, am I allowed to be a little miffed that it didn't arrive? Or that, you know, in the same way that I try to do things without disappointing people,

I hope people try to do things without disappointing me. And like, does that make me a flaming asshole to like?

AlexYes. Yes.

MerlinAnd no, but no, but anyway, I don't know what the point of that all was. I believe in you. I believe in you. And I think you're funny.

AlexOh, thank you. I thank you. Thank you. I make the people who I want to make laugh, when I make them laugh, I'm like, okay, I don't know if I'm funny, but I did the thing I want, which is just hopefully make someone a little bit happier without being shamed on Twitter.

MerlinWe know whereof we speak because we're both the kind of weird, weirdo turkeys who like enjoy becoming fake. What's that phrase you use? Parasocial. Like friends at a distance with somebody on a podcast who were like, you know, you know, like, for example, like last night I did something I very rarely do, which is I added somebody to like say, you know, and implied this is up your alley. With John Kimball, because it was vaguely related to what's the word he uses? Sacred music?

AlexOh, praise music.

MerlinPraise music. You know how he enjoys listening to praise music. And that's the kind of thing where like, how could I not send that to John Kimball? I'm not trying to like, I don't mean to be like, you know, I'm not trying to brown nose, but just to say like, you know, here's a different flavor of this. It's shape note singing and it's gorgeous. And so, yeah, there's that kind of thing. Yeah. You know, nice things are nice. Like Bob Belcher says. We've still got a lot to cover in this episode. What all did you write down?

AlexI mean, we covered funny voices. the F keys and filling in fields

Merlinoh we're doing pretty good okay we're getting through a lot of these

Alexyeah yeah we got through the five great words however I have

Merlinyeah what were they I gotta go to fives.com the website what am I missing sandwich monkey robot pants damn it there's one that I'm missing

Alexit's not umbrella is it

Merlinumbrella umbrella fives.com funny words. I'm really embarrassed. Oh, wait. Monkey? Robot? Sandwich? Pants? Oh, man. I feel so bad. I really gotta fix this. Pants is a

Alexreally funny word in any context. It's a great

Merlinword. It's such a great word.

AlexIt's so good. Panties.

MerlinFunny words. Funny words. Pants. Well, I should just do the thing here and do robot. So, anyway, I'm having kind of a funny strange day. Oh, I can't find it. Sandwich monkey. It'll come back to me.

Oh, I also realized, I only realized today, save it for the after show. Would you do me a favor and write down emotional labor?

AlexYep. Doing this. Doing this. It's happening.

MerlinI just realized only this morning that there's a kind of emotional labor that I inflict on other people that I had not realized until today.

AlexHuh. I mean, well, I'm going to do one better. Emotional. See, I do type slower on this one. Labor that Alex

MerlinThey should have an emotional Labor Day.

AlexInflicts on Merlin. Huh? Yeah. What? Yeah. Uh-huh. It's always two labors with you. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Save it for the after show.

MerlinOh, okay. Wait, one you do on me. You do that.

AlexYeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

MerlinThe only one of those I can identify is how you constantly share objectionable things with me that you know I don't want to know.

AlexI didn't send you a micropenis. I didn't do it. I respected that.

MerlinNo, but sometimes you do do like a you guys on me where you're like, have you seen this? And it's like, oh, nothing good ever comes after. Have you seen this? Have you seen? Oh, no, sorry. Have you seen this yet?

AlexYep. But that's I was going to say, you got to add one word to it.

MerlinThat is the opposite of you are not in trouble.

AlexYep.

MerlinOh, God, please let it be about Matt Gaetz. Please, please, please.

AlexPlease. Oh, gosh.

MerlinJust a little bit last night. We got a wingman update. Just a little bit.

AlexReally?

MerlinOkay.

AlexCan you update me on Matt Gaetz?

MerlinOh, I interrupted both of us. I'm sorry.

AlexNo, no.

MerlinSee, nothing substantial yet. I don't want to get wound around the axle. What were the other things? Emotional labor. You're doing my emotional labor. Archer.

AlexI want to know what the fancy versus raw means. Why don't people?

MerlinOh, well, it's just that I like this. So I so. Oh, God, you got to see this this crazy session I made. So when I record with a little behind the scenes, don't tear away the curtain for a minute, folks.

Alexandra, I believe Alexandra and I are both now on M1 Max, which is a really big deal in podcasting for reasons that would not become. does seem obvious to a lot of people. M1 Macs just changed a lot about how Apple users do podcasts. And I'll tell you why. Because, God, since before MacBreak Weekly, almost every podcast I've ever been on, excluding the ones where somebody tries some app that they're excited about for two weeks, has all been on Skype.

AlexOh, the pre-Zencaster, like, oh. Yeah, I get it.

MerlinI mean, all that stuff, I don't know. Anyway, but the point is, up till now, and y'all probably know this, you probably use this, whether or not you podcast, but Ecamm makes an app, it's a plug-in type thing for Skype called Call Recorder. And that's what pretty much everybody, it's not always the only thing people use, but since Christ was a corporal, everybody pretty much runs Call Recorder, which records a .mov file, I think it's an .mov, it doesn't matter, gets your side of the conversation and everybody else's side of the conversation, right? So it does not have it on separate tracks.

on top of all of this, Skype is notoriously very bad about playing well as I learned in that episode where I didn't record Macs because I assumed what I heard in the headphones is what Skype heard. Skype is extremely confused about that. So now, so that's happened for years. Well, guess what? And I had heard that the support on M1 Macs was going away for call record. I didn't realize it was gone, daddy gone.

AlexYeah.

MerlinSo like I fired this thing up went, ooh, I guess I really need to focus on Audio Hijack working.

AlexMm-hmm. Yep.

MerlinSo I record the straight local file, like right out of Skype or Zoom. Well, we'll come to that. But anyway, I end up with different tracks. I'm trying to make myself sound good. I always end up giving people the raw file, which has zero processing. The only processing related to that is whatever's happening in regular hardware software. I'm not changing anything. All I adjust is the volume. But then I won't call it fancy, or as we see it in my house, fancy. And that, it denoises. It does a very light 10-band EQ.

It does a very light bit of compression. And I end up sounding more like the Dickerson than I would like to be. And nobody ever likes it.

AlexI like the way it sounds.

MerlinAnd all my editors and producers, three in a row, are like, please send me the raw version.

AlexOh, my. Okay. So, I'm, oh, who even?

MerlinI think it's because they like the raw version. I think they don't like having stuff. And I know this is ape law. It's Ape Law that you always give people the cleanest one, cleanest, you know, right-sized loudness signal, and then let the editor do the rest.

AlexYeah, I mean, yeah, but also—

MerlinI just want to sound fancy.

AlexI find that a lot of those editors are not—I don't know. Actually, I don't know the people who edit your shows other than our producer Quinn. But a lot of people have legacy, they have legacy workflows that have been brought over to Logic from things like Pro Tools. And by things like Pro Tools, I mean Pro Tools usually, not always. Should I be using Pro Tools? Oh, God, please.

MerlinI don't need to be using Pro Tools, do I?

AlexNo. I mean, if you want to make like a huge symphony type mix, even though, no, no, I truly, the only reason I learn Pro Tools at all is because sometimes I have to open it and I'm like, but it's not on my personal computer.

MerlinWell, I noticed that a lot of, for example, like tutorials on stuff. I was looking for a good tutorial yesterday on iZotope because I love the idea. I love the easy cleanup button, but, like, sometimes it has very strange results, especially when it does, like, spectral denoise. And, like, you lose a lot of the high mids on somebody. And even with my dead ears, it's like, ooh, this sounds both, like, way too low midi, but also, like, robble, robble. Like, it's kind of wavy sounding.

AlexYes.

MerlinBut a lot of those folks use Pro Tools.

AlexOh, interesting. Huh.

MerlinWell, I don't know some of them. This is really boring. We should be talking about the board. Anyway, I'll send people my raw. We can cut all that out.

AlexYeah, just you got to. You know what? There's some risk to raw dogging it. But if you pull out the other file, it'll be fine. It'll be fine.

MerlinWell, the big news, though, that I'm sure everybody's excited about is the thing I've been threatening to do for weeks. I finally did. and I sat down and I made me this crazy session called Mega Zoom that I think I sent you.

AlexThe audio hijack session, yes.

MerlinAudio hijack session. By the way, I fixed Mega Zoom. Mega Zoom, all of them, I realized my volume was too low on my raw and my cooked, both. Anyway, but now I'm putting out four files for every recording.

AlexOkay, okay.

MerlinMe raw, me raw local. Yeah, yeah. Me fancy local.

AlexFancy.

MerlinEverybody else. remote plus a blended, like for a guide track, everybody's speaking.

AlexSo, you know what I mean?

MerlinNo, but they're separate. These are all separate things.

AlexNo, I know.

MerlinBut they also are not aligning well. And people sometimes get alignment problems with Audio Hijack, correct?

AlexOh, I mean, I have occasionally when there is a ton of drift because of like internet latency issues.

Merlinbut I wonder if it's something I did in let's please stop talking about this no you can tell

Alexme about your life what's your what's your deal oh oh I'm getting my uh second second uh shot today

Merlinoh congratulations yeah I hope you feel good I hope it doesn't uh wreck you the well honestly I'm fine being wrecked like just I I mean that's how you know it's working yeah exactly yeah the

AlexThe first one wrecked me a little, and I didn't want to talk about it because a lot of people aren't getting their second doses, which...

MerlinOh, I see what you're saying. Come on, guys.

AlexCalifornia is doing great. Please.

MerlinIt's like me when I never used to finish my penicillin. I just took all those little viruses to the gym. Got them all jacked.

AlexOh, washing hands. You talked about why.

MerlinI did. Because my pad feels a little like human skin.

AlexAnd if I eat... Your what feels like human skin? Hold on.

MerlinMy pad. My new pad. I showed you. What pad? My pad. My pad on my desk. My desk pad. Pad for desk.

AlexOh, the fancy one. Okay. Yeah.

MerlinIt's a little fancy. I put some rubber micro stickies under it and now it doesn't move around.

AlexOh, are those the Fonzie stickers?

MerlinThey're a little Fonzie. It's the ones that are like the one that comes with the watch thing. And I bought a sheet of that and I just cut them up into little things. And now, you know, things stay where you put them.

AlexOh, I like that. I mean, I've been trying to magnet. Thank God this is another incidental cable show.

MerlinOh, I love magnet-ing. That's Charlie's favorite hobby. What's your favorite hobby? Magnets. What's your favorite food? Milk steak. I'm just going to put steak. No, milk steak.

Magnets. Foncie magnets.

AlexI mean, you can spend hours explaining magnets to me. And then afterwards, I'm like, I don't know, but I still love it.

MerlinMagnets got a mind that they own. What?

AlexThey just go all over the place.

MerlinThey go do their own thing. I use magnets for lots of things. I use magnets to put my beloved, those little knives that I buy lots of. I magnetize those to things. Anywhere I wish I'd had. This is true for trash bags. It's true for knives. Anywhere you wish you had a trash bag, put a trash bag. More similar. Anywhere you wish you had a knife, leave a knife there.

AlexYou're big on knives this week.

MerlinI suppose I am big on knives.

AlexI think I'm caught up with the Merlin podcast.

MerlinTalking about my booing knife, my big booing knife?

AlexYeah, yeah, yeah.

MerlinThe big booing knife. That's that. This is how could this be worse than last week? How is that even possible?

AlexI don't I don't know. I mean, I do know because my brain is more broken than usual.

MerlinBut oh, yeah. Yeah, that was what I was asking you. if you want to say anything uh anything new and different still just chugging along with the thing yeah yeah yeah all right more later more later all right hey ding ding ding um we don't talk about the vestiboard i just this for some reason this no i okay no we need to talk this fucking

Alexboard because you sent me without any context i know and so you ask yourself does he love this or hate it and i just i'm so worried about this it's gonna be really difficult for me to subscribe

Merlinto just pardon me very difficult for me to describe without it being immediately clear as it probably is what my feeling i don't i truly don't know because our our farmer co-host sure had a feeling about it and this oh oh this is this seems like the kind of thing that would make max loses mind. This has got to be up there with the importance of centerpieces. Yes. Yep, yep, yep. So, okay. Where do you begin? Okay, so this is...

AlexWhere do you... A flappy train... Picture a flappy, old-timey train sign, I guess.

MerlinOkay, so you can all go and just look this up on your own. How did this come onto my radar screen? I think it came on my radar screen while I was looking at YouTube tutorials about something related to home stuff. And maybe it included...

AlexIf-ta-ta, probably.

MerlinMaybe, but it might have included the word display or something. And then this thing popped up. And at first, I saw this thing and I was like, wow, that's interesting looking. So like Alexander said, so imagine the classic, where's the one airport where they had this until recently? Was it JFK, Chicago? I think it's somewhere in New York. But you know those little, like old digital clocks or like you say, like a train board or, you know, you think about in the Hudsucker proxy, You've got that where it's got all the letters on each one of these things and you can make words out of each letter.

You guys know what I mean by the flippy thing. So if you flip from A to B or whatever and you can spell out, you know, Chicago and the time and whatever. Classic train station sign, right? This has 132 characters. So this is a big thing that you put on your wall. It's got a VESA ability. I guess it's big. It's really big.

AlexYes. This is bigger than most people's televisions, I think.

MerlinOne, two, three, four, five, six. I can't do the math. 132 divided by six. But six rows and then however many columns. And you think, oh, that's kind of an interesting idea. Like, what would you use this for? It's big and it sounds really loud. Which is great. If you're in an airport and you're waiting for an update and you hear that cascade of all the things flipping, there's probably a name for this. we could look it up but anyway and you're like okay well that's kind of intriguing what do you what do you do with this thing and you put it on your wall you know right you put it on the wall

and and this is i think it's meant to be something like that panic app i like that's gone status for it loved status for it yeah but like the idea is you put stuff up here same way that you would want people who are going to use your train to know uh you know which which terminal what number, what time, that kind of stuff. And it's got some smarts of some kind to it where you can send stuff to it.

AlexThat's one. Yep, yep. I'm sorry, go on.

MerlinSo it's got all the letters. It's also got colors. Sure does. Sure does. With Vesta Board, you can inspire family or team members by easily sending messages from anywhere. iOS, Android, and cloud apps for use on any device. So they see the primary use of this is you're not at where the board is. You say with your phone. It's not even to be as cool as status board, which I deeply miss.

AlexYeah.

MerlinRight? It's not as cool as that. The whole idea of this, and the guy in the video, was I hallucinating or did he say he originally created the vest? I love these kinds of totally fake stories. They're always so funny. His idea for the Vesta Board came about because he had to travel a lot for his work. And he wanted a way.

AlexOur CEO, Dennis, to travel.

MerlinThat's it. And he wanted a way to keep in touch. Well, in particular, to keep educating and stimulating his daughter by sending, by while he's out of town, sending inspiring quotes to a very loud board that would then say something like, be the change you want to see in the world, Mark Twain, or whatever, right?

AlexMm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

MerlinAnd that was where it started, right?

AlexYes. Yep. Yep. That's where it starts.

MerlinYou can also do different kinds of colors. Can I just mention in passing, it's $2,850.

AlexYep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Merlin$2,850. And all the demo stuff, it's always like, wow. It's like I watched the one on how to mount it. And it's a lot of work. It looks really heavy. You got to mount the thing. You got to get the cover on it. You should hopefully have a recessed. They talk about the different kinds of plugs you can get for this. And I'm like, the whole time I'm like, I can see it. You know, the same way that people could look at me and go like, why do you, the opposite of this in some ways. Why would you need a stream deck? Why don't you just turn your fans off with your hand like a person? It's like, well, it's fun for me. I like it. It's, you know, stimulating for me.

AlexI mean, but if you don't want the stimulation, you can get white glove installation for only $449.

MerlinThat's a good deal, Alex. You should do that. You should get one for you and one for Matchy. And whenever you guys are out of town traveling, you can send each other inspiring messages.

AlexInspire. What is traveling? I don't know. What's happened to the plane?

MerlinYeah. A rose is a rose is a rose. You know? You can, you know, you can Toklas and Stein it, if I may say. Toklas and Stein. That's an offer I might hire. $2,850. But it was some of the least inspired demos. And, you know, you know me. I'm the worst. My demos are always the worst. But it was just so hilarious that it goes. and then it just says something like i i think therefore i am renee descartes you're like oh

28 50 huh 440 for the uh for the installation huh one of the the nice promotional pictures

Alexis i am going to make everything around me beautiful that will be my life

Merlinwe've got to be missing something right it makes patterns out of colors i truly don't think we i

AlexNo, I know that we aren't because I had a brief correspondence with this company. And at the time, this wasn't.

MerlinOh, was somebody in your organization thinking this would be just the thing?

AlexLike a good idea for an open office, which it is not. This is not a good idea.

MerlinWell, like I've been to the panic, you know, humblebrag. But I've been to the panic office and seen the panic status board in action. Like they when I think they just do it for themselves now internally. I know Syracuse and I miss it.

AlexYeah, you selfish God Cable, Nevin Mergen, keeping their stuff inside.

MerlinOh, they're canceling everything these days. But, you know, and they use it for, like, all the stuff you would use, like open bugs, but it was such a great app. You could, like, point it at, like, JSON or an XML, and it would just pull data out of that. Stuff like, Syracuse showed me how to get our Libsyn download numbers, I think, as a JSON, and basically get it to display. Status board would do anything. But it was fun and it was gorgeous and it was really, really useful. And I could see myself today having an old disused iPad.

I could see that hanging on a wall just to be handy right now.

AlexYeah, that is something that was great for an open office because it also had a ton of APIs like pulling in public transit info. Yeah, right, right, right. You know, like just, oh, I almost wonder if they made it too fun. And that's why.

MerlinI don't know. I think my takeaway is that, you know, like they just announced a couple of things. They're sort of EOLing. And I think they're just real smart about not needing resources for something that's not worth it. I think that's a way to put it. They're not going to say, oh, you know, we're taking away your insurance because of the discourse. But they are going to say, look, this app, like you see this with indie developers all the time where they're like, I cannot keep. Sorry, after this, I can't. I'm not going to support, you know, iOS 4 anymore. or whatever. It's just too much work. It's holding me back to not be able to keep this alive.

I've got to keep making new features and keeping it stable, and I can't do that while I'm supporting all this different crazy stuff. I'll bet it's something like that.

AlexWell, that's fine for panic.

MerlinThat's fine for panic?

AlexWell, in reverse, they are probably one of the first.

MerlinYeah, why would you care about keeping your business healthy? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys are so uppity. Why don't you just say yes to everything like I do? You're so snooty.

AlexWhy would you move into video games? Because it brings you joy and it's great for your company as well. Why? Why?

MerlinAnd so as I sent this to you, I did find myself thinking, like, am I being a sourpuss? Because I'm trying not to be a sourpuss. I'm not doing very well, but at least I'm trying. I'm trying not to be a sourpuss about stuff. And I'm not even trying to be that, oh, man, for $3,000, I could save a baby or whatever.

AlexWell, if you knew why it was $3,000, it would...

MerlinI bet this is not a kind of thing you buy off the shelf anywhere. This is probably a real pain in the butt to make and maintain. I mean, think about... You worry about getting a single dead pixel on a monitor. Think about, in a lot of environments, what would be required, I imagine, to keep this thing running. It's like owning a pinball machine. A pinball machine is basically a boat for your garage. like pinball machines are so delicate in the way that they're that they work the innards are by and large i mean in later years it became very electronic but you think about you know i watched

um there's a great technology i've been watching a bunch of technology connections lately and i was watching the one where he describes how a jukebox works it's crazy i've never really i never thought about what's involved in a jukebox taking your input grabbing that record putting it on and playing it. And it's an incredibly complex system. Anyhow, I don't want to be a sourpuss, but like, for example, here's a section on there. No, it's going to be in means. Beautiful and captivating. Vestibord creates a focal point and a shared messaging experience

that captures attention and enhances any setting every day. And for some reason, I love this photo. I'm guessing this is

Alexhis daughter. Definitely for sure. Not a model. This is definitely... Oh, but she

Merlincould be very Tina Belcher. like she's on the floor. It looks like she might be covering her ears. Maybe she's screaming. I can't tell. And up on the wall, she's staring at the big board and the implicit message being that this is something that her father has sent her, I guess, or this is helpful for Ashley because on the sixth row, it's row one, Ashley's dead. Row two, some colors for some reason? Row three, science, mystery dirt, colon, yeah, science, colon, math, colon, metric volumes, social, colon, liberty kids, exclamation point, writing,

colon, fantasy. So Ashley's on the floor staring at her day. I assume it's her day. Maybe this is the one who killed Ashley. Maybe Ashley's dead. But somebody's looking at the board. And remember, this is preceded by... So there's times, for example, when mostly things like Intercom or the Amazon version of that is more of like a joke in our house. It's just a way to be silly and, you know.

AlexOh, yeah. Like the walkie-talkie thing on the watch. Yeah.

MerlinYeah, but like there are times and, you know, now more than ever or then more than ever in the last year, like I don't know. You know me, Alex. When I enter a room, I read the room. I think it's very important to learn how to read a room. And the opposite of reading a room to me would be using intercom to yell something through the entire house when I'm not there. This is not quite as crazy as that. But if my wife were in a meeting, which she is a lot on Zoom, and suddenly something went and it came up with like a quote from Sweet D or something that I thought was humorous.

AlexOkay, that would be worth it.

MerlinYeah, or like somebody's made Ascii art of a butt to send to Ashley's Day.

Alexthat's the thing i would i i don't think you are yucking any yum because the yum of this product is a flex from like nostalgia the whole like nostalgic capitalism of isn't this thing cool and slim like look at this svelte way to go back to the vintage stuff where really it's just you know you're texting something you're texting a three thousand dollars machine it doesn't even

work that like its api is like nothing it's really really i mean i don't know oh wait a minute oh is

Merlinthis based on your so did you get one of these to play with at the office no we so like when we're

Alexworking on like designing a game cafe it's like all right we were i was able to talk the owners

Merlinout of this but it's oh so you've encountered this before yes of course you have now i get it

Alexokay yeah and it's like do you want as people are playing like board games and enjoying their dinner tear every time like it sounds like it might be really loud it's i have not heard it in person to

Merlinme it sounds like a swarm of cicadas or something electronic cicadas i love that band this could be

Alexdifferent now as i'm looking at the but that's part of the fun i think the nominal fun of it is

Merlinthe like because like it's exciting when you're in or like again i keep thinking i there is a very famous one of these and i want to say an airport or a train station i think they took down recently i thought it was chicago or maybe new york grand central i don't know but it's also like in the movie the hud sucker proxy it becomes a joke so nor um nor nor norville norville barnes he goes to like try and get a job and he goes to the job place and it's a store front with a big window and all it is is a bunch of these in the windows but it's really funny because they flip over to all these insane

jobs and they're all but like the thing for all experience is required for all of them and it's expressed in all these different ways and that's part of the fun is Norville goes and stands there and she goes this all really comes together when you go down to the section called communicate what matters I feel like everything you need to know about why somebody decided to make and sell this might be encapsulated. So you can say it's about Ashley.

But, you know, as a former Merlin man used to say, yeah, it's good to handle your email well, but the single greatest thing all of us can do is to send better email and to send less and more careful email. Not no email, but like better email, right? And the example I used to use is like, and this partly defines, I feel like, a team's culture or what a team tolerates is the kind of person who's like driving their Tesla and sending messages to the CC to 35 people.

And it's like, it's the equivalent of like, you know, shitting in your hand and going, look what I made. And so communicate what matters. No matter where you are, your mobile device, this is how the thing works. Look at this field. It's just a field you type in and you send it. It's so, this is such caveman stuff.

AlexRight. And it's like, there is a, I think this is a super cool, like machine wise, Like, oh, that's a fun, cool, crop, art thing, whatever. It is not billed as that.

MerlinHere's how you're supposed to use it. No matter where you are, your mobile device controls Vesta Board from anywhere to send messages that make a difference at the right time. And so in foreground, we see the message that has been typed on an iPhone. And in the slightly background, we see that that message has been received someplace where the person with the phone is not. So here's the kind of message that can make a difference at the right time. the San Francisco deal has been closed, exclamation point. Congrats to our West Coast team, exclamation point.

AlexBut Merlin, you can schedule a time.

MerlinThat's a good point.

AlexYou can schedule a time.

MerlinBut imagine you're not at the office. This is like something from Black Mirror to me. Like you're not at the office. Imagine so like, and I've been reading this. Actually, I want to talk to you about this. This book on anxiety that I've been reading talks about, a bit long story short, it's basically understanding that this psychiatrist saying that anxiety is a habit. And in the same way that like you develop good and bad habits, these certain ways that basically anxiety and a person who is anxious, it's a, it's a kind of a habit where you can have, you know, and it's very CBT sort of related, but like there's certain things that like when you even like you hear a

noise or you see a thing or you have a thought, there's this trigger. And like, I could see in the same way that like, you know, like for example, I hate it. I don't hate the messages, but I hate it when I go to Twitter, especially on the web. and I see that I've got messages and I'm always like, oh, like, oh, no, it's kind of, oh, no, this is going to be, because, you know, DMs are, DMs are something I have to deal with. Right? No, no, no, it's not terrible. I'm just not a DM kind of guy. It doesn't occur to me to go look there. And sometimes it's really nice. Sometimes it's like my friend in the meat puppets

goes, I just sent you a shirt. I'm like, oh, my God, this is the best. A lot of times it's fun back channel stuff. But then other times it's like it's somebody I hear from like maybe once a year and now I got to deal with it. And they go like, blah, blah, blah, this thing. And now we get a thing. And now I'm doing DMs with people. If I just see that blue text, there's DMs. It's totally irrational, Alex. But I go.

AlexNo, it is not irrational. That is what our brains have evolved to.

MerlinI get the, am I in trouble? I get the, am I in trouble, basically.

AlexYeah, yeah, yeah.

MerlinI could see, it would not be difficult for me to first of all become very irritated with the flick of flick of flick of letters. Because this is exactly the kind of thing, the two partners of the company would do to compete with each other, updating messages. That's exactly the kind of dick thing a lot of dudes would do is to keep overwriting somebody else's message with your message. Classic. Am I wrong? You think that's never happened? I bet that happens. So you start getting habituated to, well, you know, boy, it's kind of hard to work. Those of us who are at the office working,

and it would be probably about a week before, you know, and I bet it's got stuff like, you know, how sometimes there's like a beep when something starts before it makes the big noise like you hear the sound of keys going into an ignition and you associate that even though you haven't heard the engine yet you associate that with the car starting i could see there being like a whole constellation of little noises that this energy you go like oh here it comes

Alexgod it it i just oh god i hate it so much it made me mad it made me mad i wanted to love it and it

MerlinAnd it made me mad. Now, the thing is, this guy, Ashley's dad, is probably going to follow back Google Analytics to find that we talked about here. And now we're probably going to get an email about this. Or maybe he'll send us a board.

AlexI was going to say, if CEO daddy wants to, yeah. Listen, if a CEO daddy, like, excuse me, Mr. Ashley's dad, like, go ahead. Prove me wrong. Both of us have learned and grown.

MerlinMr. Ashley dad is my father.

AlexYeah. Yeah. oh i i uh just discovered some real-time follow-up i don't really i'm trying to actually only use twitter on the web now because i i truly have become addicted i'm like all right ready to accept this and i was like oh i don't have any message requests so but but or sorry uh i'm like i don't have any messages but in the app it doesn't say it's very unclear where message requests are

so now oh my god oh thank you oh people oh thank you for all the nice words holy fuck oh no i hate it i thought if you had opened dms like it just did this oh no oh no what happened oh oh no i just feel bad i just feel i just feel oh oh okay i'm gonna stop i'm gonna stop that are you like that

Merlinrapper are you leave people leaving people on on red did you not know they had you had messages

Alexthere oh i've done that definitely before but it's not a place i look that is not a bastic

Merlinpanados that that i that's a first grade covey hole covey hole to me not no that sounds mean but it's just one of those like i'm pretty weird about like i mean at this point i don't even talk about email but there's but but there are there are bastics that i that i check a lot less often than i used to and i i gotta say part of it is things like this book this book reminding me and you know what? We should talk about this in the after show. The book is called what? He was on the Ezra Klein show. And the book is called, I've been reading the book and I don't remember the name of it,

but I'm on chapter 18 of a book called Unwinding Anxiety.

AlexChapter 18 of how many?

MerlinLet's see. Well, I jumped around a little bit, but anyway, it's good. And this guy is good. For notes, I will find his interview on the Ezra Klein show that I listened to twice because I really liked it.

And he gets into a lot of stuff. He's very slightly adjacent to a lot of very interesting ideas that I have known about. But I like the way he puts it. Like, I know about growth mindset. We learned about that through my kid's school.

AlexI don't know what the fuck that is. Is that like new math? Oh, I just failed the challenge. Oh, my goodness. Sorry. Go on.

MerlinIt's like fixed. The idea is fixed versus growth mindset. It's a change in thinking. But like, so I'm kind of, I'm aware of that. They made us read a book about that. But then also that stuff like he just nails, I feel like really nails some ideas that I needed nailed in a particular way. Like explaining how there's your comfort zone, there's your growth zone, and there's your panic zone. Which is probably not the first person to say that by a long shot. But like when you're an anxious person, you really want to live all of your life in your comfort zone.

Meaning that like he keeps going back to like the idea of cave people and the Savannah problem. Like basically, like I need to know that this area is safe before I go out here. And what he keeps referring to is the older part of our brain, the part underneath the prefrontal cortex. Our old brain has certain triggers that we don't have as much executive function over. And one of them is that sort of desire for safety. But the thing that lets you jump out of a road when a car is coming at you is a much older part of your brain than the part that then decides how to integrate that new information without getting PTSD.

That's a much newer part of our brain that doesn't have as much, you know, experience. Anyway, but that idea of like you, you know, and I'll spoil the ending for you. He says a lot of this comes down to developing more curiosity and kindness. You know, it's hard. It's hard to be unhappy and self-involved when you're being curious. See also the doctor. And it's hard to be in a terrible mood if you're being kind. Or if you, as I like to put it, if you're being helpful. Right. And I'm like, that's such a good idea. figure out how to do this. Go, hmm, about this. What is this thing that I'm feeling right now?

You don't have to live inside of it, but sit with that anxiety. I'm carrying on. But you have to move beyond the comfort zone because the comfort zone is actually kind of what's making it hard for you. The constant feeling of rechecking to see that you're still in the comfort zone does not make... You're trying to fix the trigger when you should be trying to fix the reaction. That really landed on me. You can't stop triggers, which you can change as reactions, which sounds deeply obvious unless you're me and suffer from crippling anxiety.

And you needed somebody to tell you, stop worrying about the triggers and worry about the reaction. And that requires a little bit of growth mindset, the ability to like need to change, to get outside of that area. You don't have to go to the panic area, but, but you know, you are a ship at Harbor, which is not what you were built for.

AlexI think that I have spoiled this book for myself because what I've been asking myself lately in, I guess, what would be called a mindfulness practice is what would put me in a bad or what could put me in a bad mood right now when i am very happy as i like to say who's allowed to change

Merlinyour who's allowed to change your day who's allowed to change your mood today yeah and it's

Alexi mean i guess it is kind of reactionary in terms of like all right if this thing happens how could i make that less of a shit show or like a less of an emotional shit show or like if you or or like prep how your day could be ruined if you decided to react to it in a negative way well

Merlinthis becomes very interesting because ezra klein talked about this i'm not a huge fan but he talked

Alexabout this in a way okay my argument for ezra klein is i don't think he's a very good interviewer so he gets sometimes interesting things out of people that like sometimes they're i don't know So there was a good –

MerlinHe's like if Joe Rogan worked for the New York Times kind of.

AlexThat's so good. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's the daily of Joe Rogan. Oh, sorry.

MerlinNo, but because he brought this up in a way that like – there were several times reading this book and listening to this interview that were real, you know, as they say, aha moments for me. And so this guy's thing comes down to something that is very similar to CBT. And so he's really – I don't have the time to find my bookmarks. But he's really encouraging you to say, like, okay, well, there's a trigger that happens, there's a reaction, and there's behavior. Very CBT, right? Cognitive behavioral therapy. And, you know, learning to basically develop control over this nanosecond opportunity that we have between something happening in the world and us reacting to it.

And as he keeps citing in here, then for the habit of that becomes, you know, a habit or an addiction is when you keep doing something even though it has had adverse consequences in your life. And you keep doing it over and over. Like, why does she always date guys who are mean to her? She's probably the only person in the world, right, who's ever dated guys who are like her dad. Oh, that's interesting. No? I've known quite a few women like that.

And probably some dudes. But it was Ezra Klein talking about how he is a very anxious person. And he described something like he was, like, reading my diary. Because he goes, like, oh, you know, I do get anxious about something. And then, like, my reaction is, he says, like, one thing I do like about myself is that I'm very good of problem solving and deciding what to do about something. It makes you good at your job for his kind of job. But the problem is, what if that's not based on anything? What if that anxiety just came out of somewhere and I go straight into problem solving mode and over engineering mode

and overthinking mode? And so, spoiler, I'm like that. When I have anxiety about something, I don't have control over the trigger. I think I should. And then I respond by creating, I can sometimes respond, surprise, surprise, by creating a ton of unintentional busy work until I don't feel the anxiety as intensely. And it feels like I solved the problem. But did I? Did I really solve the problem? Or have I now developed a habit of thinking that kind of,

without realizing it, without wanting to, is it possible that I now associate, oh, that anxious feeling went away? I guess it's because I did such good planning and thinking. Well, guess what? Now that's just another habit I've got. And it's not making the anxiety better.

AlexYeah. It's probably something that a lot of people have either developed or, you know, exacerbated during quarantine, I think.

MerlinAbsolutely.

AlexYeah. I mean, I'll do my queer card of, you know, discovering. Yeah. I'm a little pocket queer.

MerlinOr a big, well, it depends on what kind of pants.

AlexYeah. Oh, God. I know I do not identify as a pocketable monster but I do love them but no like uh you can find out not even just like you haven't solved the problem but you don't know what the problem is and you haven't given yourself space or you haven't had space or time to figure out what the problem

Merlinreally is and yeah yeah I was talking about something back to work like if if something was annoying me or something was a quote-unquote problem and the problem went away how do I know that the thing I quote unquote did fix that problem if I never understood what caused the problem in the first place.

AlexOh, I hate when it happens. That's why I don't always trust OS stuff.

MerlinThat felt deep, Alex. That felt deep to me. When I realized that, that felt deep. Like if I'm just standing in the room when the thing was less annoying, does that mean I fixed it? Like, you know, does I piss on a spark plug feeling? I'm just gonna try all these different things and eventually, or like with Home Assistant, like it could be something in my configuration file. It could be something in the hardware. of this right but if i try six things and reboot it and it works yeah did i fix it or did i just or did something just stop being broken and i was in the room when it got less broken

Alexthat's not i'm not a handyman now i mean that's kind of why oh this is so dumb but i sort of have a changelog for my life to try to put really to try well because i mean that's a good idea like a programmer's notebook for your brain yeah that's good yeah like almost oh i wish i could it was probably a post by marco or something about you know cleaning up your code and stuff like that and i was like huh huh i should i you know it'd be easier it's a really or like the way

Merlincasey i kind of haven't done this yet but casey has a cool thing he does with brew for keeping track of of everything that he wants installed i've seen the other thing he does in brew

AlexHomebrew?

MerlinSorry, Homebrew.

AlexOkay. Oh, that's what the cool boys call it.

MerlinNo, he rolled up some kind of a package where it's like it'll install all the, as you say, binaries for all the things that he wants to move from computer to computer. But I think the changelog idea is very interesting.

AlexOh, interesting. I would break this. Oh, I would break this. the homebrew installs the stuff you need that Apple or Linux system didn't I always like the little Linux dig I don't know why it's there

MerlinI don't know you're horny for Linux

Alexoh no no no no I am horny for open source stuff very much lately but oh it's

Merlinthe communities can I read you something from this please so there's this page and so I'm a highlighter I highlight Before you know it, because it's not really a conscious occurrence, the way you deal with an emotion or to assuage stressors becomes a habit. This is a crucial moment, so please read this slowly. With the same brain mechanisms as that unnamed cave person, we modern geniuses have gone from learning to survive to literally killing ourselves with these habits. And this one page, I will send you this page because it's one page. I just wanted to highlight the whole thing.

But it's not working so well. I'm not just talking about stress or overeating or shopping or unhealthy relationships. too much time online or that general anxiety we all seem to face all the time. If you've ever caught up, if you, if you ever get caught up in a worry habit loop, you know what I mean. This is a thing that he repeats a lot where he shows a trigger or behavior and then the result or slash reward trigger a thought or emotion behavior, worrying result or reward avoidance and over planning, et cetera. It says here, a thought or emotion triggers your brain to start worrying. This results in avoiding the negative thought or emotion, which feels more rewarding than

the original thought or emotion. And so these are things that helped us to survive. Now this learning process can be leveraged to trigger cravings and evoke emotions and create habits, compulsive behavior, and addictions. Pretty good, huh?

AlexDamn.

MerlinAgain, it's maybe obvious to somebody. Things are so obvious to people who don't need to be told about it. Have you ever noticed that?

AlexIt's the last place they're looking, really.

MerlinYou know, every day somebody's born who hasn't found out how to think about their affliction.

Alexdig dig dig dig oh no i'm just excited i am this sounds like a book that is if not life-changing life-altering for you and that's just exciting oh i i like things like this i need to remember to remember yeah like yeah what's what's the i'm writing it down to remember no i'm not writing it down to remember later uh the like the field notes boys um and i should get a vestibule i

Merlinshould get a vestibule to remind me to be in the moment challenge honey i sent you a message on the

Alexlawnmower go to the garage pull the cord really hard do you well okay all right this our challenge almost almost is sort of you could almost tie it to this a little bit uh transition not that kind

Merlinum the oh in terms of like being aware being more aware of the thing you're doing and don't realize you do that's a good point that's a very good point yeah dougat dougat dougat dougat dougat alex what's the challenge that we had for this week what what even is it oh don't swear curse or whatever use use them bad words i thought we did this before but i couldn't find it i searched i did the trick and everything and i swear to god i thought in the max era we did this as a

Alexchallenge and i could not find it we did curse like a sailor oh of course like a scott like a Scot? Yes.

MerlinThe Scots? Yes, yes, yes.

AlexThe Scotsman. And not the binder one. The sheep one. I don't know what they do in Scotland.

MerlinOh, interesting. Like the great Mike Myers says, you know, Scotch is a drink and a brand of sticky tape.

AlexOh.

MerlinThat's a good movie. That was shot in San Francisco. There's a bar in that movie. So I Married and Axe Murderer. There's a bar in that movie that I've been to many, many times.

AlexOh. God, now I want to watch that book.

MerlinThat's a pretty fun movie. I think it's a fun movie. I laugh at that movie. He's talking about all the different characters. He's himself. He's the other guy. And there's his dad, remember? And he keeps telling the kid. He calls his kid Head. He goes, Heed!

AlexI don't think I've seen this movie since I was like eight.

MerlinHeed! Out of the way! The boy's head is like Sputnik. It's very... What is it? It's spherical and pointy in parts. Heed!

AlexRight now, half of our audience is cracking up. and the other half is...

MerlinOur Scots who are mad.

AlexOur angry Scots. How did you not... How was your swear jar experiment? Which is what I did.

MerlinJust a tiny bit of backstory. I think I mentioned this in the after show last week, GiveSharkAndMoney.com. I think what I said was something along the lines of, my kid, who's great, so amazing, Like, you know, I've always just assumed that she swears around her pals because I hear her pals swearing. For years, I've heard that. And I just assumed. But, like, you know, she's been doing it more around me, which is not surprising because we watch very objectionable things and I curse like a sailor. I've always known that. But this sounds hypocritical and if it is, I don't care.

But the point is it's only recently I've heard her swear my baby. And it doesn't bug me intensely, but it's a little jarring. And then I do for the first time feel like if she'd started swearing like that as an experiment when she was four, I would have had a big reaction. Right. And said, oh, I'm never swearing again. Right. My dad had to swear off swearing. My dad chose to swear off swearing. My dad was apparently a legendary cursor. Like he he could really he could swear very well.

And it was difficult for him. But I only heard my dad use the word damn once in the seven years that he was around for when I was there. So he did stop.

AlexDid he swear off swearing because of you or just in general?

MerlinAbsolutely. My mom told me that he did. Yeah.

AlexOh, wow.

MerlinAnd then so we'd moved into this new townhouse and, you know, we're moving. It's extremely stressful. This is such a moment. This is I remember this. This is such a flashbulb, as Max used to say, moment for me was my dad went out and got us chili, Cincinnati chili to eat after we had this long day. And he came home and the order was messed up. And my dad did something I've never seen him do. He walked up to a wall and he hit the wall with his hand and said, God damn it.

And the cover fell off the doorbell and hit him on the head. My hand to God. And all three of us, including my dad, laughed so hard.

AlexI thought it was going to have a sad ending. Oh, my God. Oh, oh.

MerlinIt went bonk. The plastic cover bounced off his head and we all laughed and had chili. That's a teachable moment. And so I thought, you know what? And also, I'm better than this. I want to curse and know that I'm doing it. I don't want to constantly find myself. Sometimes it takes something like saying, I want to stop swearing, at least for a week, to be aware of how much one does swear because you catch yourself not being good at it. Here's another class example. Please don't go into a thing when I say this.

I'm trying to be better about pronouns yours in particular and a funny thing happens because I'll be telling a sweet anecdote about you and I'll say oh you know whatever and she had to go down and fold the towels or whatever and Emma like in a heartbeat will go they they and just like oh my god this is my this is the albatross that has been assigned to my gender neck but then other times I go yeah oh yeah and they decided to go out and buy she decided to buy a pinball game she got date fuck damn because i actually i did the rare like double bank curse where i i said

the wrong pronoun cursed i'd said the wrong pronoun tried to fix it cursed and then and

Alexthen cursed because i cursed god damn it oh gosh problematic all the way down this is and so

Merlinyesterday i asked my kid how i'm doing because i said i said i feel like i've done pretty well She's like, look, I don't care if you curse or not. I said, that wasn't what I asked you. You know another thing? People at my house, stop assuming that my questions about any or statements are performative. Oh, write that down. Performative statements. I don't know if I'm using that word right. But don't assume, don't give me an answer to a question I didn't ask if I'm just saying a general thing. So if I say to my kid, I feel like I've done a good job with cursing less. Do you agree? And my daughter responds by saying, it's okay.

I don't care if you curse. And so what do I say? Because I'm not kind of a jerk. I go, that's not what I asked you. I'm asking if you thought I did a good job at this thing empirically.

AlexLike in a, I see.

MerlinI feel very low when my wife, I say something like, hey, has anybody seen any of my socks, my clean socks? And my wife goes, I'm sorry, I didn't put the laundry away. Oh, God. I feel very low. I feel very low when my, when I'm just, all I'm doing is looking for socks. And now my wife thinks that I'm judging her because she's not doing her woman work, her Charlie work.

AlexYeah, no, that is a thing that Machi does that we don't fight over. But I'm like, I'm not. No, this is.

MerlinI think. Can you capture that? Because I would love to talk about this. I think that is worth. We need to find out what this thing is called. We need to interrogate this because I think it's not good. And I think it creates an unintentional environment of supporting passive aggressive.

AlexYes, that's what I wrote.

MerlinBehavior. Yeah. Even if you don't mean to. But you're assuming that I'm being passive aggressive. and if I am I would love to know that but really I just need to go I need to get my socks but I do it all the time I do it to them all the time

Alexwell same I mean I know that with Mouchy in particular I would call it an internalized assumption of passive aggression and it's like absolutely a family thing and like

Merlinwhen your family does it

Alexit just happens

MerlinOh, yes. I'm so easily triggered when my mom does that kind of thing. Well, it takes increasingly less and less because the trigger gets easier to pull, potentially or otherwise. Like, say you have an overdue call with somebody in your family, and they say something like, I want to do a voice here, but something along the lines of, I guess it's good that you're busy.

AlexOh, no.

MerlinOr similar. Or like, I guess you've been busy lately. why are you saying that oh okay there we go why are you being so defensive i'm just well no you're trying to imply that i should have called you before and that's fine you're right i suck i suck but i become 14 years old as soon as i'm around certain people very much my mom same and

Alexand i have gotten to the point where i mean this whole this whole swearing thing actually went a little bit deeper than I assumed because I used to very much have to like uh just be aware of my own swearing because nobody swore in my house ever and really not even like the like the hells and dams nope no no not not even you you couldn't say pissed or sucks or like it uh yeah

MerlinI was in Cincinnati there were a lot of families and I'm not being passive aggressive about my church. I love my church. But there were a lot of people in my church where they had banned swearing like as a concept. So definitely you couldn't say God. And of course, you couldn't even say gosh, because gosh. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. And also heck and dang and all those things. But like it's like Rod and Todd, you know, like not calling somebody like a stinker because that that is that's a form of cursing. Yes. The basis for this goes back to all the great curses,

as I've learned, many of them come from, what's that word I'm looking for? We're terrible with the religion. Not impiety, but blasphemy, right? Most swears are based in sex, poop, or blasphemy in some combination.

And anyway, but yeah, so you, would you guys do heck and darn? Or dang it?

AlexYeah, it was a dang it and heck. and my although my mom and grandma continue to say oh jesus mary and joseph and uh or uh but fuck what was this ah damn shit ah let me uh heavens to mer heavens to murgatroyd what the heavens to murgatroyd what in the world does that oh pink pant wait no what is that yeah i heard that

Merlina whole lot. There was a cartoon character in the 60s, I want to say it was a cat, top cat maybe. There was like a Hanna-Barbera character that would say, Heavens to Megatroyd.

AlexOh, that's so funny. Yeah, like the equivalent just swearing was like, oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph. And that would

Merlinbe like when something really scary.

AlexYeah, it was like, oh no. But it wasn't like...

MerlinThat's become big in our house. Mr. Peanutbutter's catchphrase. Doggy-doggy what now?

AlexYou're a good boy. Yes, you are. Yes, you are.

MerlinGood horsey. Good horsey. But so you were allowed to just as long as you couldn't say change the channel, cocksucker, or something like that.

AlexYeah, that's the thing. It wasn't even so much that, I don't know. Like my parents weren't strict, but also it's like some things didn't exist in our world.

MerlinAnd there must have been overflow. And at this point, you're in Catholic school, right? Yeah. So, I mean, I'm just guessing or inferring here, but like at least, okay, so speaking for myself, the sort of triad of home and family life, school life and church life, there was a lot of like sort of understood things that were supported by all three of those. Let's say, for example, you meet somebody who's older than you. And I personally like this, but you say sir or ma'am when you meet somebody or you call somebody Mr. Something. That kind of like having a respect for elders was underscored, encouraged, and honestly punished if you didn't do it.

Unless at home. I mean, I'm not going to get in super trouble if I don't call Mr. Wilson Mr. Wilson. But you know what I mean? There's those kinds of mores that were, at least for me, widely shared in these different communities.

And so there must have been things where like, yeah, you know what? Cursing less? Church is okay with that. Right? Like your family's, you know, again, another one of those obvious sorts of things. But like that disparity seems to come along. And the thing that causes that makes that disparity so such a problem for some families is when, let's say, two of those things. Let's even say school and family or like, you know, school, family, church even. But like at school, you're meeting like older kids and learning new swears and like.

AlexUnless you go to Catholic school, but you know how to get on the Internet without your parents knowing. because that's how my education. Yeah.

MerlinThe jokes that my kid laughs at, I don't know, sometimes I'm like, ooh.

AlexI'm like, oh boy. Because I think she does know why it's funny.

MerlinI mean, we both laugh a lot at the Nightman song.

AlexThe, oh.

MerlinSorry, the Dayman part one. Dayman part one. The part that includes the big strong arms.

AlexOh. So have you explored the early seasons?

MerlinOh, yeah.

AlexAs a family, like I see it. That's why I say that this is the most progressive show on television.

MerlinDamn, Charlie got molested.

AlexYeah.

MerlinAnd the doll. When his mother's holding the doll and Uncle Jack is there. Oh, my God. Oh, God. I don't have my hands on. How did it go? So I'm going to say I'm going to give myself a B+. I did curse occasionally, and I'm doing it in brackets here, but I'm going to continue to try not to curse as much just in general. And I think I did well. How did you do?

AlexI think I did. Very well, especially because two or three times I caught myself and I don't think there was a time where I didn't catch myself.

MerlinYou didn't catch yourself. But to me, like it's like you catch yourself or you do it knowing that you're doing it. It's the times you don't know you're doing it that I personally I wanted to get away from.

AlexRight.

MerlinI don't want it to just become natural for me to say these very, very unnecessarily coarse things. Like just keep your powder dry. Save it, you know.

Alexyeah I when I tell someone to fuck off I want to meet yes make it matter

Merlinwhen you get on them with your big strong hands and say go fuck yourselves the nomst. I. I? I was.

Show notes

Transcript

240. Mr. Ashleysdad

Show notes

Transcript

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