269. This Shitbox

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge. Watch the Black Mirror episode 15 million merits.

MerlinDo By Friday.

AlexOh, oh boy. Oh boy.

MerlinFive year olds are here.

AlexOh, gosh. there are so many well kept in context i often think about the least successful hero in marvel

Merlinhistory oh captain what i gotta turn you up i gotta turn you up i my interrupting is back and i need to stop but you people need to be louder yeah okay okay hang on check check we'll

Alexstart the show in a minute oh i'm gonna i'm gonna watch this video you sent me oh okay hang on i

Merlinhave i have an opening statement which is that you're not allowed to notice how gross our kitchen is believe me i have to live with it i hear about it i just want you to meet my new mop my new mop is nate well oh mo is very close to mop um i thought that was a a bit along well

Alexand wally but oh oh okay hang on now i'm interrupting oh god i can't hear any welcome

Merlinto two by five what is happening pre-pc pre-pc check it check a one two i hear me

Alexwhy can't i hear talk talk talk you're talking me oh sorry no i was i was sending you a picture of what my desk has become in the last week oh good so i i sort of like a mutual assured

Merlindestruction situation oh i see throw me the head i threw the whip no time to argue got it oh yeah

Alexoh and then to the to the right oh god it just oh wait there's the monster drink god you are so gay you are so gay look at me i'm a streamer yes but wait no no no that's just my micro there's literally no streaming equipment in here oh i take offense to this distorted photo before we even get to the content that well i set it to the wide anyway mutually assured destruction All I have is a Zoom adapter. Oh, my God. It's finally a Bluetooth adapter that works. Because, you know, you used to need like a T1 lot. Not T1. Radio people know what I'm talking about.

To like get people on the phone and have it sound good.

MerlinISDN. Dedicated ISDN.

AlexThank you. Yes. And now I have something that's almost as good in terms of like sound quality.

MerlinWhoa, will you capture that? I'd like to hear about that.

AlexYes. Oh, my gosh. I love it. But yeah, this is the wide angle of my desk. Anyway, whenever you send us photographs of your home, which is not often because your lady friend forbids it.

MerlinNo, pretty often. No, who forbids it? What? Who?

AlexI thought that you, oh, I thought the head of your household didn't like you sending photographs of your home.

MerlinWell, I mean, I know. Actually, to clarify, I.

AlexOh, we can cut this if I was.

MerlinOh, no, no, not at all. I mean, it's me. Where I'm like, you know, I, boy, I like my life. I like my hobbit hole, my hovel that I live in. It is a hovel, but, you know, there are many like it. But I kid, and yet I don't. I think it's weird that people feel entitled to look at, zoom in on all the things that aren't the thing.

AlexOh, yes. Like me. That's why I don't do it.

MerlinBecause I will zoom in.

Alexand i live like a bush pig i i stopped responding to people thank you for all the nice words for uh i i'm an internet native well i you know we got a lot of nice messages last week about the

Merlindumb video we did we did really oh i want to hear about that i feel like our patreon is going way

Alexway down and i don't know whom i've offended oh no that's because i just usually it's me because I get the mean Twitter DMs. But there were a lot of DMs who were like, oh, Alex, you're really grainy. Do you have that? And I'm like, no.

MerlinThat is because I'm way zoomed in.

AlexYes, because I didn't want to have my bed in the shot for two hours.

MerlinRight. And you don't have, I mean, I have ridiculous limitations. I should send you the full Roomba map of my office. Well, you know what it looks like, but it's very long and slender, you know, like a college boy.

AlexUh-huh, yes.

MerlinAnd it, and it, uh, yes. Johnny. And it, uh, so I don't have my, the reason I look weird in videos is I have a lot of good lighting options. What I don't have is any depth. So normally if you have like a classic sort of key light, one of those super bright Richard Avedon kind of lights, what? Probably 10, 15 feet away. Right.

AlexIt would be so soft and like. That's real far, but I don't know. You've got depth.

MerlinWell, no, what I'm trying to say is like if you're doing actual, as I understand it, and I really don't, but I'm a man so I can pretend to. Three-point lighting, or as I do it, four-point lighting, you've got a key, a fill, a back, and a hair. And I do have all of those lamps. I use the Elgato products. They're not surpassingly bright, but they're plenty bright. So my understanding is you start with a key, in my case to my left, at an angle, and that's at, let's say, X percent.

The fill is on the other side at X divided by 2-ish percent. Back behind you illuminates whatever is, you know, in the background and helps with stuff like a bouquet if you want that. And then the hair light is –

AlexWhat? What did I say? Go ahead. What did I say? Okay. So you're talking about your bouquet like your Pokemon.

MerlinMy X-Men posters, you mean. But I didn't realize until Adam really included me that this is how important the hair light is. I mean it's subtle but boy does it ever make a difference if you have a hair light and you turn it on then off then on don't you think it kind of makes a pretty big difference in how you get sort of framed as a head

AlexI think eye light is overrated and hair lighting is underrated

Merlinwhich one's eye light

AlexI mean both sorry a lot of folks try to get that they care about your eye line more than your hair line to get the sparkle in life in your eyes.

MerlinWhen you say eyeline, I'm not trying to be simple. When you say eyeline, I think of the 180 degree rule. You mean, what does that mean for lighting?

AlexJust to get the light. It's essentially the same thing as a hair light. No, I mean yes, but no. I'm out of the film game. I haven't been on a film set or a shoot in two years, I think. Yeah, because, oh god. Oh, wow. Somebody hands you a gun.

MerlinDon't shoot it.

AlexOh, also, you call me the big streamer. I have zero lights on my desk except for the... Oh, I actually... I lied. I apologize. I have the things that you told me to get that I forgot the name of.

MerlinYou got the little red box. You got a Scarlett. It looks like maybe a Scarlett 212.

AlexYes, but behind my monitor, there are lights that...

MerlinOh, did you get the hues?

AlexYeah. Yeah, they, they, um, fuck, what is it called? The, um, I don't know, but my eyes hurt less now.

MerlinThe ones that are kind of tall.

AlexYeah. Yeah.

MerlinThose, those now, uh, comprise, constitute, I always get it wrong, make, um, one of my favorite, uh, lighting things at the house, which is a scene called Red TV, which is, it turns off all the lights in the Western part of the house and just illuminates the bloom underneath our couch, which gives a nice kind of like, you know, mood light. And then we have two, one each of the Hue lights. We can't remember the name of behind the TV for, I mean, it's not bias lighting. I don't think technically.

AlexFuck that thing. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. Yes. I have bias lighting.

MerlinI wanted to do that with light strips because I thought that would be cooler, but I capitulated because it's the house and the house is cucked by Phillips Hue. But no, that's one of my favorites. Like when we're sitting around, cause another thing. Okay. Okay. Okay. Please remember where we are.

AlexThis should be a good, good challenge. All right. Writing.

MerlinYou wrote down some challenges. I wrote down some challenges.

AlexAll right. All right.

MerlinOne thing is I am, when I say I'm old, I'm not saying that for people to go, oh, no, you're not. I mean, I'm entirely aware of the ways that I think in most ways.

AlexBodies decay?

MerlinBodies decay, a center cannot hold, Joan Didion. And the, you know, slouching toward Jerusalem is what I'm saying. I need very bright light. I've always preferred when I – it's funny, though, because, like, you know, I should do some shots of the office. Because, like I said, I've got these three main settings for the office, which are – the main one is warm. There's cozy, which is cozier. And there's bright, which is bright. And by virtue of all these various lights, I can get that the way – now, when I want it bright, I want it to be like I'm investigating a crime scene.

And this is why in this fucking cuck nanny state, it's been so hard for years to find 200 watt incandescent light bulbs because they're basically verboten in California.

AlexOh, like a Marco situation?

MerlinMaybe.

AlexHe has those recessed lights that I don't like.

MerlinNo, but like for like in a room that requires illumination and doesn't have if you have like a Syracuse to set up where you've only got one boob light, Michael boob light to deal with. Like I need some serious 200 watt lights. So I have suffered in silence, except not, for years with the fact that Hue lights, even Hue lights that are the white lights, Caucasian lights, even when you got those all the way on, I would peg that as about the equivalent of a 60 watt light bulb, maybe.

AlexReally?

MerlinWell, and I want 200, 200 blaring watts equivalent. I got hiccups. so when I want it bright I want it bright and when I want it cozy I want it cozy and that's one really neat thing about this bullshit is you can get the setup you like I am happier when the lighting supports whatever it is I'm trying to do whether that's watch the great Nicolas Cage movie Pig which is wow so fucking good or I want to like

do the kinds of things that I do often in the afternoon when my brain's melting down and I need to focus my attention and I do stuff like check and test and fix batteries or I have to do like, you know, sort of like detail work where I put on my glasses and I got tools and I'm doing stuff, you know, and for that, I want crazy bright light. But I, but the problem is if you go to the 200 watts first, they, they suck so much unnecessary power down and they get hot and

Alexet cetera, et cetera. So here's the hack. Are these the kind, because I believe the, the millenniums and down won't understand, are these the kind of lights where like you turn them on and it'll uh break a breaker well or blow a breaker i i don't know well no just a classic i

Merlinthink i think the word is incandescent like a classic post edison bulb that we've all that i grew up with and have used i mean i think you know i had like a lot of people have my flirtation with um i always say the wrong word here c that's okay crt is a monitor cri is a color thing c clf kmfdm is a drug against war whatever the ones are that were ugly and made everybody look like get jaundice in the 90s the the tuby ones but then the led lights came along and that was such a development because they were pretty bright you could often get them in a color that you liked

mostly and i think i could be definitely way wrong but i think that if without led lights i don't think we would have gotten to phillips hue nano leafs etc probably right i mean aren't they aren't

Alexleds the basis of those i i believe so i remember very early like like when i moved to my family's not like where my parents live we moved there when i was around three and i remember us getting led like there were led lights everywhere so i don't have really memories of pre-led lighting other than in other spaces and there was no like and the ones the ones in the pig museum are like

Merlinoverhead, like classic, the ones that Syracuse and I were talking about, like tube lights, probably in like, you know, industrial fixtures, right?

AlexRight. And that is the brightest.

MerlinYes.

AlexThat, yeah. Yeah.

MerlinIt won't cast a, it doesn't really cast a shadow.

AlexNo.

MerlinSo, okay. But the thing, so I like a really bright light and here's the way that I've gotten, first of all, like, yeah, I've been not all in, but for years I've been mostly in on smart home lights. That was the, you know, between the Amazon product line, Tube Lady and Hue Lights, that was my thin end of the wedge to getting into this bullshit.

And, but, you know, do we talk about this here or someplace else we talked about? But there's this known thing where, like, when you, the warmer the light gets, at least in my experience, I'm not a scientician, but at least in my experience, the warmer a light is, the less lumens it throws off. So like when I'm in cozy setting all the way turned on, I'm getting way less lumens, way fewer lumens. If I'm in what I call warm, yeah, that's nicer. Bright is like crazy bright, but it's super bluish white.

Like almost like what in the industry they call daylight, like something like a 4,000, 5,000 K. So the way I've accommodated this is there's two things that entered my life in the last year. I think I've told you about these. One of them is that iDevices is the only company I've found that makes an aftermarket adapter for an A19 light fixture. So you know about this, right? Like iDevices and you screw it in and then you can put a light bulb into the iDevices socket and now it's smart.

AlexI'm pretty sure that our show depleted the amount on Amazon.

MerlinI'm sorry. I can't remember. But that was really cool because now, for example, in our closet or in the side hatch, I can make a smart light. So basically putting a Hue, fooling Hue, because, boy, there's a huge bug, at least from my standpoint, in the Philips Hue ecosystem. They make one of the best, I think, one of the best motion sensors on the market that works with a lot of things and is pretty cool. Cool. Yeah, I've got this in a lot of places.

And I use them to trigger lights in the garage. I use it to trigger lights at night. The bathroom light comes on and then turns off after 10 minutes. That's great. But if you have those, as I do, I'm here to tell you. So let's say you've got all your rooms and you've got all your Hue lights. But then you've got, say, in our case, our closet, which is a big walk-in closet because it's San Francisco. And there's no accounting for how these goddamn places, where they started versus where they are. But you'll get these weird mystery closets in San Francisco. So we have a walk-in closet in our hallway, which is where my wife and I keep our clothes and stuff.

But there's not – guess what? I needed a crazy bright light in there. So for years, I've had a 200-watt light bulb. This is so interesting. Happy New Year. In a classic old-school Amazon.com, screw it in, and it detects motion through – it's not a solenoid. But, you know, the classic old school, it has a little window around it that can detect motion, and that turns on the bulb. Do you follow so far?

AlexYeah, 2022, the year of Hue.

MerlinWell, but in this instance, before the Hue, I need that 200 watts, buddy. So I had the 200-watt light bulb going into the old school motion sensor, and that worked pretty great. What I really wanted was if I had the Hue sensor. Well, think about what that does. If I got the Hue sensor, now I'm in this whole new world of, oh, different things can happen at different times of day, which is actually really great. There are certainly parts of your house where you don't want the zero and one of no lights or 200 watts.

AlexI never do that to my spouse, and he's totally fine when that happens.

MerlinWell, I try real hard. I mean, we have a separate piece about how we deal with things like that, but that's part of my responsibility is to have that not be obnoxious. But still, the point is, Daddy needs the light. But, so here's what comes along. Guess what now? Okay, I want to put a Hue sensor, a motion sensor in the closet, such that if there is motion detected, the light will turn on, and then it turns off after so many minutes. So far, not a huge improvement. But the problem is, if I have a Hue controller for a Hue light,

I'm not going to get the Lumens. You know, poor Professor Lumens, having a really tough night. Do you follow? So what do I do? Well, okay, well, it would be neat if I could put a Hue sensor in there and have a bulb other than a Hue bulb. So there's exactly one, so follow me so far, there's exactly one socket in, like a closet, right? The pull-down, classic, you pull a chain and the light turns on since 1928 or whatever when this house was built. But are you aware of this?

It sounds like you're not. Did you knew that? I'm kind of actually I'm not feigning surprise I'm kind of surprised you're not a motion sensor what do you use for motion sensors right now I don't have any

Alexmotion sensors cameras can

Merlincameras can work as motion sensors too which is cool

Alexyeah I feel gross about having

Merlincameras out are you ready for a crazy bug at least in my opinion so you think of Hue and like I'm in some ways one of Hue's probably ideal customers in the sense that like I yeah people buy it for the lights but I use it for a lot more than lights it's you know it can work it can be such an important like backbone in the same way that your voice system of choice is a backbone for voice-based control, obviously. The Hue products, there's so much more. The tap switch, the dimmers, and then now the motion sensors. There's way more than just like buying light bulbs and talking to your lamp like a monster.

But the craziest thing, Alex, if you put a Hue sensor in a room and like associate it with a room, Well, guess what? You can't associate it with a room unless there's a Hue light in that room.

AlexOh, they got you this time. Oh, that sucks.

MerlinBut think about that, though.

AlexI mean, it makes sense.

MerlinWhat that means is in the single socket that I have, yeah, I've got the functionality now, but I'm only getting definitely less than 100 watts. I think probably less than 80 watts or some low lumens.

So here was my solution. And my solution is I discovered this product. And have I shown you this? It's a product that you can get very cheap on Amazon. I imagine it will eventually burn my house down. I call it the octopus, even though it's technically, what would that be? A pentapus.

Huh. I don't hate that. A pentapus, that's a very upsetting animal to encounter. The pentapus is, yeah, it's got the A19 screwy, screwy, screwy. You screw it into something, right? So far, so good. Guess what? Out of that, there's a little platform. It's got another A19 coming straight down and then four swivelable A19s that surround the A19 at the center.

AlexYou're going to die. Wow.

MerlinFive fucking light bulbs.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinYou ready? Now, here's where it gets good. You hear the violins tuning up? Because here it goes. You take, what do I call it? The pentapus? Synthapus?

AlexThe Pentopus. Syncopus. The Pentopus. Syncopus?

MerlinNew from Cinco.

AlexFood tube.

MerlinYou put the Pentopus into the iDevices.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinHang on. You put the iDevices into your 1928 socket. Now you got a stew. But here's the good part. Those aren't 200-watt bulbs. That's the good part. If you put in LED bulbs, well, yeah, they're dumb, but I buy those big-ass 200-watt equivalents that like they literally like produce zero heat and draw very little power. And now I'll get in a second to how I tricked the Dutch company Philips.

Now when there's mission detected, the iDevices, yes, from a different part of the ecosystem goes, hey, looks like they want lights. And it turns on the Pentapus for bright, bright, bright, bright light. I also have one of these in the garage on a standing lamp that's a little bit macabre. And how did I do that? The lines were given to me. How did I do that? I did that by fooling Phillips. I have three set aside light bulbs, and I've written on the light bulbs, bathroom fake, closet fake, garage fake.

And anytime I have to redo anything, which believe it or not does happen with smart home stuff, I put them all into, wait for it. Oh, now you hear the cellos? I have a separate pentapus just for reconnecting the fake bulbs.

So fake garage, fake bathroom. It's a very smart house. Fake garage, fake bathroom, and fake closet. Say, hey, look, even though I can't find fake closet five nines of the time, I know it exists. Ergo, I allow a motion detector in the closet.

AlexOkay. Hold on. So there's a fake pussy in each room, then? They're not all in the closet.

MerlinThere's a fake pussy in the closet.

AlexOr just for the closet and the garage.

MerlinYeah, mostly. Because our garage has a single... This is why I can't have fiber. We have a single... And just to be clear here, there is a single light bulb plug or socket in our garage.

AlexOh, it's clear. That's the one thing that's clear. other than the emitted fire.

MerlinAnd it's one of the old school ceramic ones. And it's got a single ungrounded 110 plug built into the ceramic of that and that runs the garage. But I can't have fiber because it needs its own, a very small amount of electricity to do that. But there are tricks. There are things you can do. How did we get to this? We were talking about Mo.

AlexYes. I was about to watch the Mo video and then we went into the pussy story about how pussies are going to I mean I'm going to demand

MerlinDo you think it's going to be a big year for pussies Alex?

AlexBe honest. I hope so but I'm going to demand that you send me the pentapussies so I can buy them before the other two people who listen to this show buy them because that seems like what I want but also what I can try to do with in front of the show, Sydney, it was asking about nano

Merlinleaf balls. Who's Sydney again? I keep hearing about Sydney and I feel bad that I don't...

AlexTell me again who Sydney is. I feel like I need to know.

MerlinYou keep saying people are missing good Sydney content and I'm not sure who we're talking about. Who's Sydney?

AlexOh, okay.

MerlinSydney's still on the internet. Sydney has not been chased

Alexoff the internet by Ursula K. No, no. We're cutting the... Sydney is my good friend and Quinn's partner, but we're not going to put that in unless Quinn puts that in. Well, I don't.

MerlinSidney's a boy?

AlexNo, Sidney's a they. And the, yes, another dirty, dirty they. So my fellow dirty they Sidney.

MerlinWas Quinn seeing a boy for a while?

AlexQuinn, if you would like to talk to Merlin about this.

MerlinI'm going to go to Alex. I want you to have access to the pentapussy. I want you to have.

AlexSydney was asking me about the nano leaf bulbs, and I didn't realize how much cheaper they were than the hue lights.

MerlinImagine the late Shirley Bassey coming back for the new James Bond film.

AlexI'm not immune to your charms or your five octo arms.

MerlinI'm going to look for penta pussy. What's it called? I used to date a girl.

AlexNow I date a boy. Oh, now I'm married to a

Merlindog and cats living together.

AlexLady and boy.

MerlinOkay, here it is. I'm going to send it to you. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. This really does look like something that would be in a fire marshal's report.

AlexOh, my God. Here you go.

MerlinIt's by Jackie Led. Jackie.

AlexGod.

MerlinJackie, don't.

AlexiCloud, let me love you. Oh, fucking iCloud.

MerlinSomebody told me, was it fucking Dan said he's got everything on iCloud?

AlexI listened to that.

MerlinAnd I'm like, are you kidding me? I frequently consult my Twitter archive because when I started deleting my tweets, I did do numerous downloads of all my shit. Now, here's what you may not know unless you're a dork is there's a bunch of globs in there. There's a bunch of .js. And, yes, there's every photo you've ever posted to Twitter. And sometimes the only place I can remember I've posted a photo, I want to find my set of Joan Didion smoking by Corvettes. I can go in, open that up as a project in BBEdit, and find it.

You know what I mean? And I swear to God, iCloud always has that really disappointing icon. There's the no icon means we're copacetic, everything's downloaded and uploaded. You get the one that's like the cloud with dashed lines, and you hit download now, and you hit download now, and you hit download now, and it still never downloads. Do you get that? how do you just say keep all like act like dropbox just for a minute mostly and always sync all my shit all the time everywhere stop trying to be smart do i have to turn off the

Alexbe smart with my space thing maybe oh i i don't know because i occasionally get this the little sad cloud but and but then i like turn i log out and i log back in and it's fine it's when i get oh god i'm so scared to do that so scared to do that i i've you know what it's kind of like um

MerlinThat used to be a species-ending event. You could really fuck yourself so hard by logging out of iCloud. Because if it didn't get it right when you log back in, oh, man, you'd be fucked.

AlexWell, I mean, that's the thing. Otherwise, my shit's gone. So it's like, okay. And luckily, they've been fine.

MerlinLike they say in Animal House, you fucked up. You trusted us.

AlexI know. I trusted big fruit. Should not have. But the circle and then, you know, it's the typical circle, like loading, loading.

MerlinCircle as in Logitech?

AlexOh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Okay, no more time. Way to be late to the show.

MerlinI'm sorry. I've been fighting five-year-olds. I've been fighting five-year-olds all morning.

AlexParentheses. Hey, listeners. Merlin apologized for being late to the show. What? Merlin apologized for being a little late to the show, which is funny because, you know, He had like three years of having to wait for Max to be late. And now he's had at least a year of me either being late or literally falling asleep in a chair, passing out. The most patients in the world. Staring hypnotically in the hallway at your kitchen.

And then, I got it. That was a funny joke about those hallucinations. And he had the gall to. No, no. you had the gall you did that um uh the had the gall call the word that i don't even really understand to um that's that's a type of thing you're a seagull thank you but hey pair of pals he said thank you for your patience and i was like

i believe i literally said shut up anyway thank you thank you audience oh you probably did oh

MerlinOMG, shut up. Look at that.

AlexOh, yeah. Yeah. LaMau.

MerlinLaMau.

AlexOh, boy. Oh, so I'm actually looking at iCloud now. I get the little circle and see that it's like, oh, no, everything's fine. You change lives

Merlinlike Jackie Daytona. Jackie Led Daytona.

AlexI don't...

MerlinOh, have you not gotten to that yet? I know that reference. Oh, shit. You haven't gotten to Jackie Daytona?

AlexYes. Yeah. No. That's Laszlo's... Yeah. No. I, uh, wait, wait, wait, wait.

MerlinEmma got a shirt of that for Christmas. It was a very good shirt.

AlexThere we go. Yeah. Oh man. Welcome to Dubai Friday where we, you know what? People say like, if it's not accessible, who, who do you care about? And I'm like, you know what? I guess our show isn't accessible for those who don't watch what we do in the shadows. And I, yeah, I am okay not catering to those people. I was one of those people for a good month. Yeah.

MerlinNo, I understand. I've been there. Thank me now or thank me later.

AlexWe watched the entire first season yesterday.

MerlinAnd then you just start over. We just keep starting back over. We just re-watched, even though Emma is very pained by this episode because of her various shipping requirements. That last, that third season and then the relationship between Colin Robinson and Laszlo is so fucking great. And then that last, and when he does the speech to Nadja, I do literally cry. A simple girl who didn't even have a surname.

AlexOh, how sweet is that? No, you're not allowed to activate this space. There's a twist and a twist.

MerlinThe twist is we find out about the Sherwood Club. But the other twist is we find out why he hates England. And I thought that was right up to the edge of like... Oh, no, what's the word Laszlo uses? He doesn't say mawkish. He says, oh, no, unseemly. Laszlo has such a good word for... Remember his word for... It'll come to me. Anyway, that episode, and of course, because it's very important to her in the run-up. This really begins, well, it begins in the first episode, but in the casino episode, the best episode of the show, when they're asking Guillermo...

AlexMost quotable.

MerlinThe most quotable. You don't think so? It's not the best.

AlexI don't think it's the best, but I don't know which... I haven't decided what's the best. So I've defaulted now to Baron Nights Out.

MerlinRoll the dice. spin that wheel enjoy the old England come on oh my god poor he just

AlexI think it's bad he just goes outside the airport

Merlinand then gets back on a plane a library's open you stinky bitch but when it's so funny and this involves Shawnee

AlexShawnee Shawnee

Merlinthey're asking about the chubby girl why she has to be chubby and then yeah so I too have interests and then they're like you know I was raised in a house where it took a long time to realize that I was. And then Sean comes busting in, and Emma's like, do you see this? Do you see what's happening? I'm like, yes, obviously, Emma, I get it. And she keeps saying, do you get it? Do you get it? I said, yes, I get it. And they should be together probably. They should be. Nandor and Gizmo, actually it's Guillermo, should be together. And it's growing and growing. And then finally, I don't want to spoil it here

because this is such a great cap off to these three seasons, this journey. But there's a conversation they have in his room I think after they've, you know, tussled.

AlexDone the thing. Yeah, yeah.

MerlinAnd it's so sweet and so gay. And you're like, oh, my God, this is finally happening. It's finally happening. And then we discover, and the story, I'm ruining this, but the storytelling in that episode when they show the flashback of the day before where he makes a discovery. And you're like, oh, my God, Laszlo really is the best. He seems like he's such a horny asshole.

AlexI mean, both are true.

MerlinMan, man, woman, woman, man. Greatest thing in the world is fucking. And then when the thing happens by the ship, Emma was crestfallen.

AlexCrestfallen. Fast over the season finales of all three seasons.

MerlinWhat about the rolly bag on the platform by the train?

AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want to think about it.

MerlinCould you ever imagine as you progress through this show that you would have feelings like this about this fucking show?

AlexFucking show. It's the war cry.

MerlinIt's the war cry of their tall leader, Sheldon.

AlexYes, master. Yes, master. Yes, master. My master.

MerlinOh, God. And then at the end. Oh, my God.

AlexThe only reason, I knew it was going to be a trick because you were so insistent on watching. And I was going to watch it. I was like, all right, this looks funny. And I like all this.

MerlinThe show in general?

AlexThe show in general. But you're like, no, no, no. Really watch it. And is it going to be a Sneaky's Feeling show?

MerlinGetting to the trial, which I misnumbered as the last episode of season one. But the payoff in that fucking episode is so bananas. Or the payoff, now you sat with it for a while. And you get to the cloak of duplication episode. And it's just like, are you fucking kidding me? is that guy really doing what I think he's doing? Because he might be the greatest actor I've ever seen.

AlexI know.

MerlinWhen he goes in and talks to the girl who's a lesbian or not a lesbian.

AlexYeah, we talked about this last week. I thought it was a dub.

MerlinI thought it was bad ADR. I thought it was goofy ADR because how are you going to make that match up with Matt Barry?

AlexOh, God, it's so... You know what this show... I realized they can put a cursed hat upon a cursed hat. Because...

Merlinit's a bloody cursed hat on a bloody cursed hat

Alexhey hey hey a pair of vowels if if if you enjoy the the show like that the the i can't say enough kind of things about what we do in the shadows. Like, you know how we're like, well, you probably like It's Always Sunny if you like this stuff. But no, no. What We Do in the Shadows is a show for everybody.

MerlinLike I said to Dan, I think Sunny is very much one of those, I hate to say love it or hate it. Do I hate to say it or I love to say it? I find myself saying that is very much one of those, like Tim and Eric. Tim and Eric and Sunny are two of my all-time favorite TV shows in a lot of ways. But they sure aren't for everybody there's a lot i i really am very reluctant to recommend them but like my machete order for this is i mean you know i would say watch the movie first if you can it's not imperative but the movie's so entertaining vampires don't put down towels but this is a vampire show now

if you watch if you watch but if you watch the movie which we watched again of course this week because we watch it all the time. But if you watch, it gets you into this cycle of, and this is something Charlie and Glenn talked about on the podcast, that thing of like, okay, maybe you like this album a little bit at first, but you like it more every time you return to it. And it has that, like Big Lebowski, it has that long-term value. And it's like, it sounds nuts to say this, but at least for me in our household,

like you can watch the movie and it's really good. It's short. It's very entertaining. It's shockingly well made. And the cast is just crazy good. I have a little bit of a crush on Deacon's Familiar.

She has long thighs, and I think I have a thing for that. When she's mowing the lawn, you know, and the wellies and the jeans. I just need to be able to share crushes with my kid. We have a big Jodie Comer thing going on right now. but um the point being uh that uh then you go to the tv show and get ready for the magic i could tell you this all day long you're going to be amazed that they pulled off even episode one of that tv show because at first it's very like i said on here i guess it feels like the

office where you're like oh i get it yeah all right and then you're like oh my god these people are so good it's okay and then you get through and you go through season one you get up to the trial which is probably six or seven or something like that you know and you'll know if you don't like it bounce but you know at any point you can go back and watch the movie again and it's going to make you like the movie more watching the movie again is going to make you watch the view and then you get into season two you get to what happens with guillermo in season one it's like holy shit and you can this is one of those merry-go-round tv shows like like at a certain

time gilmore girls was for us like you can just watch this over and over jump in anywhere enough said it's a really good show

Alexthe we talk all the time about oh gizmo my daughter

Merlinsays he's very cool on instagram

Alexoh god I don't follow

Merlinapparently he's a delight and he posts a ton of fan art

Alexoh no I also very oh I enjoy his appear. I don't want people... Oh, sorry. Your password is incorrect. Oh, okay. Guillermo, you mean? Yeah. Yes, he's

Merlinso sweet. I love... But whenever he puts the gloves on... You know, whenever Homer Simpson puts on reading glasses, you know he's about to do something really stupid?

AlexWhen Guillermo has the gloves on, look out.

MerlinLook out. He's got some roses and shit's gonna go down.

AlexOh, God. Don't... We have much to do about... Or I think we could do the same thing as i suggest this or where we just put it on an episode of what we do in the shadows upload it to vimeo see how long it takes to be taken down hey but you know we could do

Merlinyou know in our in our reminders oh yeah but in our reminders list well we could also do a uh uh formerly known as msd3k uh laugh tracks riff tracks riff tracks this is the first time i've

Alexthought about that watching actually just yesterday because i was re-watching the pilot for like the sixth time i don't know how i didn't really like the pilot the first not i didn't like it but i did not adore it the way i do now i it's like i mean like now when he's when he first kept

Merlingoing on about coming to the fancy room just a moment like i thought it was you know okay fine it's funny he's he's obviously the viago character in this instance but then you just keep going back And like it's already there. All of their personalities are already there of the three vampires, the three classic vampires. And then fucking Colin Robinson shows up and the temperature, the barometric pressure changes.

AlexI wonder if this is something where those characters like what happened to make sure that those characters were all there in the first episode. That rarely happens. Well, it happened with your favorite show that you talk about now, The Leftovers. But it's not a...

MerlinIt's so difficult to do. Think about all the Mike Schur shows. And for better or for worse, the rap on Greg Daniels, which I think is not entirely fair, but I get it. Rap on Greg Daniels is like all of his shows get better or like become the show you loved in the second season. Or definitely at least late in the first season. But it isn't until the second season purportedly the Greg Daniels shows. And, you know, Mike Schurz talked about this so much in such interesting ways about like, oh, we had to figure out, especially women, like we had to figure out what to do with Leslie Knope because that was not working. We had to figure out like we learned that Chris Pratt and Nick Offerman needed to have a much bigger role in this show.

Because initially like on Parks, like Chris Pratt was like almost like not even a featured player in some ways. but the whole bit with his leg and living in the pit and it's like he shined so much in that or you know again obviously with the office where they did a full they probably did a reboot of michael scott because they realized how different it needed to be but i i agree with you it's so weird or sunny right they keep talking about glenn is glenn is the in some ways the weirdest one on that podcast because he's so self-conscious about like his acting and his haircut and like

his eating and like all of his different things.

AlexOh, his chest hair. Oh, God, that broke my heart. I love when they go to the bank,

Merlinto solve the gas crisis, when they start taking their shirts off in the bank.

AlexPop off your shirt.

MerlinLet us come in there and fill you up. I'll bring my friend over. Guy with the towel duct taped to his head. But now that show had to grow. They had to figure that out. And now today that chemistry is magical. It started out as chemistry that really developed between three people. and then it became chemistry between five people. Like you can hear each one of them yelling a different stupid shit when they're arguing with each other. But then add Cricket. Add, you know, add Bill Ponderosa and his son, the cocaine dealer. I mean, add Wang.

I'm very aroused. He's smashing it.

AlexAnother one of those I think is me. The snail.

MerlinThrow salt. He literally throws salt on her.

AlexSorry, sorry, Coco.

MerlinOkay, I'm okay.

AlexOh, I mean, I just it's really hard, I think, to do a comedy show where right out of the gate you have the characters in a good spot. And it's different if it's like they become more lovable like Laszlo. But I think they had him right away.

MerlinOh, yeah. But the brilliance of introducing the bit about this episode, the MacGuffin of the first episode is the Baron arriving. That's the classic Hitchcock MacGuffin of like, well, the story's about this, but it's not really about this. It's the Maltese Falcon of the episode, that and the Stairmaster. That's the Stairmaster. No room for storage now. But the fact that he's coming and that causes Nadja to tell a story about the acrobatic shit they used to do. and then Laszlo

you're like oh Laszlo is so horny and he and the Baron did some acrobatic shit but like that gives them an opportunity to set up those characters I've grown fond of saying this about podcasts you come for the topic stay for the voice ideally like you discover a new podcast maybe because of a topic but I know you know this. I feel that

Alexgoes deeper. Oh absolutely I thought about that this morning when you were talking about it with Mr. Benjamin Oh, yeah.

MerlinI was talking about it with my Song Exploder friend yesterday as well. He had a funny bit yesterday. What did he say? There's two kinds of podcasts. I love tweets like this. I will always love these. He said something like there's two kinds of – let me just find it. It'll only take a second. Two kinds of podcasts.

I'm not even going to try to pronounce his name. Even though I hear his name over and over, I always pronounce it wrong. It makes me feel like an idiot. He said there are two kinds of podcasts. People I like talking about things I don't care about. people I don't care about talking about things I like. And I quote tweeted that, I favorited it, and quote tweeted that with Come For The Top. But I think the thing with the comedies, especially the TV comedies that I love, the TV part is important because, like, you know, there will be growth and change with these characters.

But it's, like, I mean, you could watch something like 90210 and, like, you could really like, you know, Dylan or Shannon What's-Her-Head or whatever. But like in my head, I can barely mentally distinguish between, is it Brandon? Some stupid name. But the two guys that have almost the same haircut and one skinny and one's not. It's like the characters are even on Friends. I mean, yeah, they're different. But no matter how good the plot of one of those shows is, I'm totally uninvested in the characters.

Or just on a more base level, I don't care if they have something funny to say right now. Raz, Laszlo, Naja, Naja's reaction shots, Nandor. I really want to hear what they have to say about what just happened because I care so much more about the characters than I do about the quote unquote plot. Now the plot, in that case, the plot is the MacGuffin, right? As with the Baron, as with all of those things, until it becomes important, which is we discover something about Guillermo that Guillermo didn't know.

AlexI do not give that bit. No, no, no, no, no. I would have been so mad if that had been spoiled.

MerlinAnyway.

AlexThat, oh, God, hat on a cursed hat.

MerlinWe're not going to cut this out. We're not going to cut this out. Do you want to talk about Moe?

AlexNo, I think this is interesting in terms of storytelling in general. I totally, same with Fagan the Jew.

MerlinWhat's he going to do?

AlexWait, what is the, what?

MerlinHe's the guy who has the pickpockets in Oliver Twist. Got to pick a pocket. And he is who I am when I fight the five-year-olds. We'll get to that later in the broadcast.

AlexOh, five, fight the fives. I, uh, that's a website.

MerlinYou did 1989. The number, another summer fight. The five year olds be,

AlexI would say, I don't know if you'll appreciate this, but I like what we do in the shadow so much. I would wait to get into hall H to see a panel of like how that show is made.

MerlinThat's a conference reference comic con.

AlexThat is where people sit for 12 hours before they can see the new Spider-Man.

MerlinOh, like to go see the supernatural thing. Oh, I see.

AlexAnd it's like you see a trailer. Yeah, whenever you see a...

MerlinIs this at South by Southwest or where would that be?

AlexNo, this is at the San Diego Comic-Con.

MerlinSan Diego. S-D-C-C, bitches.

AlexThe worst convention I've ever had to... Oh, God. I can't even imagine. Life is so different now. Massage chairs. I wonder why.

MerlinYeah.

AlexCan I air a grievance with you? No, I'm going to air a grievance with you.

MerlinAnd then I want to talk about Mo. I want to talk about Mo and I want to watch Mo.

AlexOh, good. Because this will be a downer.

MerlinMo. Oh.

AlexNo, no, no. There's this thing called COVID that people care about again. Or not. Or not.

MerlinIt'll be fine. Oh, my God. My wife and I are at loggerheads about this. Oh, my God.

AlexI mean, well, oh, boy.

MerlinBecause I've actually started actively making fun of her and it's not going great.

AlexWait, about, wait.

MerlinBecause she works at a university and like the doctors aren't that worried about her. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me?

AlexI mean.

MerlinLike yesterday, like I go into a podcast, I come out and it's like, I tried to stipulate a very controversial point. I said, I said, I feel it's a little bit like, this is a very impolitic thing to say, so I'm not going to say it exactly. But imagine you had a shelter that helped people, particularly a certain gender of people who'd been in bad relationships and had things that happened, you know.

AlexOkay. So a domestic violence shelter?

MerlinImagine if you said he's hitting you a lot more, but he's not hitting as hard. So we have to learn to live with this. And she said that's absolutely not appropriate. I said, I don't know. I guess it's not. But I feel like a little bit that's what's happening. if people are still getting hit, it doesn't matter how much less severe it is. We need to nip that in the bud. And when people that the reason I say that is all this bullshit about, well, it's way less severe. Kids are fine. CDC is just fucking, I don't know, taking the year off.

And like, and you're like, dude, like I could, I'm ready to be way wrong about this, but the fund, our fundamentals, as we say in baseball, our fundamentals are not strong. We've had so many opportunities to do relatively easy things before there was a vaccine and it didn't change anything. Then a vaccine came along.

AlexBut what do you mean when you say we?

MerlinThe people of the United States and to some extent the world.

AlexBut... Cut that, cut that, cut that. No, no, no. My wife's a woman, my wife's a woman. Cut that, cut that.

MerlinCut that, cut that.

AlexWe did. But this at this point in terms of like where we are with not just like numbers and boosters, but I.

MerlinYou mean vaccinations? Are you talking about cases, deaths?

AlexJust COVID in our pandemics. The amount of personal responsibility that has been put upon us is too much. Like, we should. It would have been so great if it was three weeks and we had all stayed inside.

Merlin15 cases, it'll blow over.

AlexIt'll be fine. And no, like I was like, no, I really, really want my Starbucks. And I'm not talking about, you know, like it's absolutely wild how red states like I see footage of like, oh, when was this made? Oh, last week. OK. Yeah, Greg Noss said that today.

MerlinI guess I think he might be visiting there. But he's like, I think I'm the only person in, I want to say Phoenix, that owns a mask.

AlexYeah. Like people are openly mocked.

MerlinPeople are great here. Everybody is so good here still. But you're talking about the personal part of it, like what we've given up to the we part of we putting life aside to make it better.

AlexNot even putting life aside. I am. I mean, sort of the like how we have all scrambled to get vaccinated, how we are scrambling to get tested, how well, exactly. Like the cases in San Francisco or like in California and in Chicago, like it, the spikes in Chicago, like it's a fucking ghost town here.

But in terms of closures or I'm sorry. Yeah.

MerlinBut in terms of like I'm staying off the street to be a good boy or in terms of like shit's just closing down because it did. It's not D.C. or New York, but it's pretty bad right now. Right.

AlexYeah, right. And it's because it's like, all right, we are doing everything right. And it is still fucking terrible. And I haven't seen people go back to as if getting COVID is a moral failing. And that, I guess, is what is really making me sad is watching people as if as if it was March 2020 as if it's like, oh, we have we have no idea. and people like shaming one another for being together on Thanksgiving.

Like I was like, I don't know, man. Like if the CDC tells you it's okay, like we didn't do it. Like, I mean, like Christmas, like my Matt went to his family's stuff, but I stayed at home because it's like, well, it just, it seems like that's a too many.

MerlinOh, I wondered about that because Matt seemed to be the one sending family photos. You know, really, that must have broken your heart.

Alexuh well it is now because we're supposed to we were supposed to celebrate we'll do like a small we're going to do a small thing with my family the week after with my nieces not now really okay so yeah well okay yes and that makes me sad but like it'd be nice to be there for their actual christmas you know with a little kid yeah oh well they were they were but it's like all right yes We are doing we're doing everything we can. Oh, oopsie daisies Omicron. And then it's like we.

Yeah, it's back to. All right. We are canceling this. It sucks. Let's let's try. We're going to be sad about this. It's going to suck. But I don't know if turning on the people who are not wearing masks, who are not getting vaccinated, screaming together amongst the wheeze of like, you know, left onward or Democrat to the left. I don't think it makes sense to yell at the people who aren't wearing masks and who aren't

Merlingetting vaccinated anymore because in the sense that it's not it's not accomplishing anything.

AlexBecause we can't do anything. We can't do. We are not the ones making mandates. We are not ones passing the legislation to to require these things like it's like what can we do to make people in arkansas wear masks they and it's vote basically does it sort of make sense what it feels like recycling it's like yes i want to recycle and it makes me feel gross because i know that our recycling is not going to a recycle to the point where we don't have a recycling spot anymore

MerlinYeah, it's almost like we're all sitting in the same, like, you think about the kid in the toilet in Schindler's List, the kid, like, hiding in the, like, outhouse. It's like we're all sitting in the same, like, shitbox. And some of us have agreed to just not shit into the shitbox anymore, while other people are, like, flying around in biplanes, taking shits from the sky. And it's like, ugh, I don't feel, I feel like I have to stay in the shitbox. because another terrible Merlin analogy,

but I can think of a million things that are similar in the sense of, well, my no longer doing the things that I think are important. So I do things because I think, I'm doing things here because I think they're important and I hope that they're useful because I can. It's not difficult for me personally and it's not difficult for my family in general to do the stuff that the smartest people seem to think will improve the situation you know um and so like me getting away from that and joining the

Alexpeople who are like oh let's be bad and order fries oh no that is not what i am what are you saying the oh i'm missing it i that we are that the uh collectively like left on you know uh or democratic to the left being angry and shaming people on the right who are not wearing masks and who are not getting vaccinated, that is not where...

MerlinOh, but that's in terms of effectiveness, right? It's not effective.

AlexYeah, it's not effective, and I don't think it's healthy for a society.

MerlinIt's certainly not a way to like...

AlexIt's not a way to live, I guess.

MerlinThat's a good way to put it, but it's also one of those, like there's the old cliche about something being a means to an end. And what do we mean when we say that? Let's unpack it just a little bit. Oh, this thing's just a means to an end. And I think what people tend to mean when they say a means to an end is there's an end that at least everybody in a given group, but arguably maybe all people think, is a good and valuable and maybe even instrumentally important end.

This is covered in that Adam McKay movie, Don't Look Up, which is basically about global warming, even though it's about a comet, which is like, you know, what if you knew that you had six months to figure out what to do before a comet hits the Earth that's going to be a species-ending event? And nobody cares, right? And that's kind of where we've been with climate change for so long.

AlexAnd there were people – and that's what I mean, though. Like we were still shitting in the – not – we were sitting in the shitbox and being shit on. And it's like a –

MerlinWell, but the means to an end thing is I understand it when people say that. Like when I hear that, when I use that, it is what I think when we unpack it, we're saying like, okay, there's a thing that almost everybody can agree is a good thing, which in that instance might be, you're not going to really like stop a comet. But, you know, if the end means, sometimes you've got, you got, sometimes you got to break some Greggs to make a tomlet, right? In order, but like, so the trick part of the question becomes like,

hey, wouldn't it be great if we could end poverty? I'm going to go a little bit Jonathan Swift here. Yeah, obviously it'd be so great if we could end poverty. Well, what are the means to that end was killing everybody who's poor or who could become poor? And you go, oh, I guess I should have asked the genie for something different. The means to the end, everybody can agree on the idea of ending poverty. But what if I told you the way to end poverty, the creative ways to end poverty are going to certainly be extremely bad, maybe for a super majority of people?

Not just about in that case. It could also be the way the cops doctor their numbers to make it seem like there's less crime going on because the means to that end is.

AlexDoesn't count if they die in custody.

MerlinI guess not. Hide the body. Hit him with a phone book. John Mulaney currently being charged with police brutality. Now you're throwing him off his rhythm. But I guess what I'm saying is like the means to an end then becomes, well, okay, well, what means that suddenly becomes a lot more complicated. because there are the people who, I mean, including me, who said, hey, shut this shit down. Like, the means to an end is we've got to stop this, so let's shut everything down until we can fix this.

And other people say, no, it's okay, and then keep that open. But the thing, as I said to Dan, and I'm saying, the thing I'm saying to you now is if there was one scintilla of evidence that the collective we had done anything to make this better, the big collective we, maybe the national we. In San Francisco, dude, we've been pretty good. We've even done some very un-San Francisco shit to get it wired right, like letting people eat outside on a sidewalk. This is a place where you can't change a doorknob in a historically significant house without two years of permitting.

That was cool. And a lot of people got vaccinated, and that's all really good. And so we're still sitting in the shitbox in many, many ways. There's a lot of people who are hurting really bad right now. it's just that even when we all can mostly agree on the end the devil's in the details in terms of the means so like there's going to be means that are ugly violent economically dangerous or economically damaging

but like also now we'll get back to the well once we get to the let's talk about means well shut down the schools no no I'm begging you please don't shut down the schools the way we wanted to not have to shut down the schools was doing all this other stuff so like then there's going to be means where there's fairly meager return on a really big wide dull you know um blunt instrument right and and and so i don't know i guess the bottom line for me is if i saw anything and i'm repeating myself from tuesday forgive me um if i saw

anything to indicate that we had earned any optimism.

AlexOh, I agree with you there.

MerlinWhat I'm saying is we've been lucky. We've been lucky because somebody, somebody like, like, like fucking like Biden and Fauci have to keep answering the same dumb ass questions about the failures of this. And it's like, well, OK, the irony is it's, you know, it's Groundhog Day for these guys. So I just said the same thing pretty much from the beginning, except for the people who think he hasn't, which is like, yeah, get vaccinated, get boosted, wear a mask, social distance. It's like, yes, but what do you say to these people? What I say is get vaccinated, get boosted, social distance.

Yes, yes, yes. But what would you say to the people who have, and you're like, holy shit, we don't deserve to thrive. We have not earned optimism, let alone thriving. And so when I see, it's sort of like CGP Grey says about Apple. It's nice to see them fix an old, dumb problem. But even as the great John Roderick says, at least my watch is right two times a day. Stop clock is right twice a day. Well, I don't want it to be because you got lucky, Apple. I don't want it to be because we got lucky, America. I want it to be because any of the stuff that we've done actually helped to address a problem.

And we've fucked it up every time. And so there's something so – I'm not a very rational or logical person. But there's something that makes my brain want to explode when I hear people say everything's getting better. Well, if it is getting better, it's not because of you. And when you say shit like it's less severe and it's less. OK, but like that's this one. You think we're done? You think Omicron what we've run out of letters and now COVID goes home and goes, dang it.

AlexLike it's like saying, you know, I can learn the Greek alphabet before this is over. I think I can.

MerlinI can keep writing checks even though there's not money in the account because I still have checks. That's what I'm saying. You're saying the future of our polity is being damaged by the way that we continue to yell at each other in ineffective ways?

AlexI think so. I think it is damaging and demoralizing when I don't think we've earned optimism. I think that—

MerlinWhat is the bone you're picking with me?

AlexI guess what I'm asking. No, no, no. What is the thing that we're disagreeing about? I don't think that we've earned optimism. Not disagree. I was just genuinely curious about like—

MerlinNo, no, no. I don't mean to sound defensive. I just don't know what I'm supposed to be responding to.

AlexNo, I was just genuinely curious because you kept saying like we on Back to Work. And it's like who is—

MerlinWell, as long as we're all in the ship box, there's one ship box and one we.

AlexYes, but then—

MerlinI mean, the improved behavior of the little boy in this part of the ship box

Alexdoes not change the fact that he has grown up in a shitbox i absolutely yeah develop i have grit you win this one no no no no it's it's more of a like um like it we were scrambling to Matt hasn't been boosted not for a lack of trying

and we um were finally able to get a find a rapid test area in chicago not not for a lack of trying

Merlinit's none of my fucking business but is that because you couldn't find a place to get boosted

Alexoh yeah he could he has not he has an appointment but still like you know it goes at it feels it feels like when we got vaccinated and i largely that's because chicago is uh we are blue state in name and chicago is a blue city absolutely but the rest yeah right exactly exactly like if

Merlinwe just keep using in a country this big we sure learn this during covid in so many ways in a country this big i really need to see your sample data for how you arrived at mean median uh mode etc edna mode yeah like if you i want to see how you got to that like this is what we means kind of shit.

AlexThat's basically it. Rethinking what we do.

MerlinI mean, California, if all you ever look at is San Francisco and LA, you would go, obviously, it's an extremely blue state. And it's like, yeah, we'll try driving 45 minutes east of anywhere or two hours north of anywhere. And it's a very, very different... This is the state that brought us Ronald Reagan, not by accident.

AlexNot by accident. Who could have seen trump coming yeah i can't see it no one ever could have expected i was gonna bum you out well anyway uh if you're in chicago though looking for rapid tested and and boosters uh check the suburbs because shocker if you like to get vaccinated i had to drive an hour and a half um but no one was getting vaccinated at that walgreens i went to oh boy it's fine um but it

MerlinIt's really, really frustrating. And I don't take any particular pleasure in this point of view that I find myself espousing. But, you know, it's the, I mean, I'm just repeating myself. But the part about unearned optimism has become ungrudgingly very meaningful to me. Because like I am, don't tell me anything optimistic. Not because, I remember one time my mom being frustrated during one of the various Democratic administrations.

with like when they talk about this kind of thing that endangers people and like when they talk about like you know the spy stuff in russia and it's like and it's like well yeah but i mean like not if like it would be like in 2022 was saying i'm never going to mention ransomware because i don't want people to ransomware me well those are kind of unrelated it's not like you're going to give somebody that idea to go do something you know what i mean it's like you they're not talking about it or the whistling past the graveyard is not making it better.

I mean, open source is good because lots of eyes look at it, not because we have one secret locked in one chamber. But it is really frustrating. And the unearned optimism part for me, it's so dispiriting. I mean, I've given up. I mean, I'm the go-along, get-along guy in so many parts of my life, like enough said. Which is like I'm willing to and willing and even eager to supplant, displace, or utterly remove my own ego and needs because of the work.

And I've pretty much always been this way, usually for worse, sometimes for better. But like I don't argue on the internet. And I also don't argue with my friends and co-hosts. I just want to get the shit done.

AlexWell, that's no fun.

MerlinWell, but I like to – I want to get back to the life that I care about. this is the part of my life where I don't, I don't need to have an ego. Like I don't need, I mean, ego maybe in the sense of like, I like, well, I'm happy when a thing turned out well, but like, I don't need to win arguments with people. I don't, I don't need to like get into chest puffing arguments with fucking anybody. And I just flatly refuse to do it, not least because I'm bad at it, but also because I don't think it's productive. And I've made a decision in life that there are certain things that are really valuable to me and then other things that provide almost zero value for a huge amount of downside.

So like I, it's been, I mean, God bless you. If you're still one of those people going, oh, we were so good. And like I say, it's time for Turkey with Meemaw. Life's going back to normal. After two years, finally we'd go back to normal. It's like, all right, you do you. I'm just going to keep sitting here doing fucking nothing and trying not to be sad. but like when that turns into hooray, you know, we can go back to Bonnaroo or whatever. I'm just like, oh, you fucking, like you don't,

you have no idea, you have no idea how fucked we are. You have no idea how small, it's not even gonna be a punch in the nose. It's gonna be a Lego in the rug. Like one shit thing is, one thing is gonna come along and we can't keep it together when everything's going well. How would we keep it together when things are going poorly or when it requires a kind of selflessness. I said this to my kid the other day when we were, I think we were walking to get mom's card at Walgreens for Christmas. But I was talking about like what it was like to, in the case of kind of my mom,

but especially my mother-in-law to grow up during World War II. You know, it's so wild. I mean, like we think of World War II as because of the way Americans tend to think in decades, multiple decades, portions of decades. I think in the public imagination of America, World War II was like four years long. Well, first of all, let me get five years long. Let me get this out of the way, first of all, which is that, and this is my mother-in-law has underwritten this in the strongest possible terms, is we did not know we were going to quote unquote win World War II.

1942, 1943, those were not great years for our war effort. We, you might've gotten these small victories, but even by the time you got up to, I mean, Battle of the Bulge, now in retrospect, we look at the Battle of the Bulge and go, hey, Ardennes was like their last death throw where the access through almost everything at that battle, knowing that like the walls were the fronts were falling everywhere. But that's still we're still talking about, you know, D-Day was what? June 6, 44.

You get the Ardennes, but it wasn't until what? April? But it wasn't until April of 45. Hitler's birth month also. It wasn't until April of 45. We had VE Day. And it wasn't until August, right? Like, what is that? Five months later? Four months later? It wasn't until August of 45 that we had VE Day. But now we can look back at that and say, I personally, I'm the historian. I think it sucks that we did not even get involved in 39 or 40. It's a real bummer that we watched London get bombed every night,

that we watched Sudetenland and Poland. We watched all that shit go down and just we're still being all fucking Woodrow Wilson and saying, I'm just going to sit on my hands. That sucks. What happened? We got attacked in 1941. December 7th, we had to fight. The end of 41. Okay? Then the war was a real dick for a few years, and then things were starting to slow down. As we learned about from the Kurt Vonnegut novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, it was all children and old men fighting for Germany,

you know, by 44, 45. We were in that for like four years. Now, granted, we did not know how it was going to go. We thought that it could end. But, like, that was – think about growing up. Like, the way that my kid can't have a normal life now. I mean, I'm sure many people don't care, which is fine. But, like, think about how it changes how you – think about fucking Paul Verhoeven. That guy's a goddamn mess because he lived in Dutch during World War II. And now he's all confused about Nazi sex and violence.

AlexUnderstand?

MerlinHe puts the gun – motherfucker puts the gun in his leg. Anyway, I was just saying to my kid, imagine how crazy that was to grow up. And there's the constant like you're hearing about people whose brothers, sons and fathers died.

Except when they're building a gazebo. I'm watching too much John Mulaney. But then you also get to like the rationing where anybody who wasn't cheating on the black market had very strict rations for fuel. And everybody or, you know, you could get nylons.

AlexAnd you had a victory card in it. Exactly right.

MerlinBut like, you know, the version of what we're dealing with now was people who did get, I mean, people got counterfeit fuel ration cards in the war in the same way that people get counterfeit vaccination cards now. It's not the same thing, but there have always been people.

AlexThey're just much easier to get right now.

MerlinWell, and like, say what you will. like I'm not a big fan of war, but like the point is like, if you want your, you know, if you want your, all of your private Soraya to come home, like we're going to have to get out of this somehow. And if you're walking in the other direction, you're like, maybe you're just one aunt in the anthill. But if you're walking in the wrong direction of getting out of this war, and in this case, our, my daughter's war is COVID. Like if you're walking in the other direction, because you decided you're tired and you want Turkey with me, ma, like that's not helping the war effort.

So like, I'm just here to say I gave up a long time having any ego about this a long time ago. Stuff I would love to do. I have a two-year-old Christmas gift sitting unused right now, which is I get to go to Six Flags in Vallejo by myself for two nights, stay at a hotel, and spend an egregious amount of money to buy the nicest high-end FastPass available to do nothing but ride roller coasters at Six Flags.

flags and stay in a hotel room by myself for two nights. I've had that sitting there for two years. You think I don't think about that? Holy shit, I think about that. Sure, I think about my kid in school, blah, blah, blah, whatever. She starts high school next year. It'll be awesome. You follow? Like, I just worry about, like, I don't even want to rep walking the wrong way. But at the same time, I do agree with you. I think the yelling doesn't help. I'm not sure what will. We can't just cut off the middle part.

Well, lucky for you, you know. And isn't it weird how the South seems to be doing pretty well with COVID now? It makes you wonder what's going on. Yeah. Sorry. Well, I think the other thing.

AlexNo, no. But I think the other thing is not helping is being sad about. This is where I get in trouble because I mean.

Merlinthat's not that's not your usual position on these things uh i also want to find out why you think it's bad to say it's okay not to feel okay because i like that phrase don't save that for the show but i i is that is this similar thing so you think like the like do you think wait a second have i said that you said that last week you said that last week um are we are we being too debbie

Alexdowner do you think no no no i think we are not like you are we we are we agree in that like uh Not that not just that we haven't earned optimism, but that like this is how we are going to be living. Like, but I don't think people have accepted that. Like this is I am surprised how, you know, how fast a vaccine was developed, let alone the ability to get vaccinated.

MerlinIt's just it's fucking it's fucking miraculous. I did not personally have nor you. I did not personally have a role in that, but I'm really glad somebody figured it out.

AlexYeah. Yeah. And that was, again, fucking luck. God, South Africa just like took one for the fucking team being like, they were so cool about it.

MerlinThey were really cool about it. Yeah, they were.

AlexThey were. They were like, I feel there are so many people who are finishing the class project for the rest of us. And we can't see that. And but also we haven't found a way to we're going to be sad for a lot, lot, lot longer. and by be sad I guess I mean we are going to be living with this a whole lot longer I used to think COVID will be about three years I think we're about that five right now and like the and when I say we I mean like regular ass citizens it we're going to because we're going to be in

this shitbox I think we need to find a way to make this shitbox better and I do not know how And unfortunately, God, when the DNC was like, vote for Democrats when Texas decided to ban abortions, it's like, well, we did. That's what we did. We did the thing. And I mean, I don't know. It seems like I.

MerlinHey, hey, black people. We're interested in you again. Remember us? Oh, my God. Look. Reverend Al Sharpton is up there. You can tell we're on your side. We're always pulling for y'all. Oh, you guys are great.

AlexOh, God. Like, they're going to be... I'm not talking about the people who are having a literal rock concert for Kyle Rittenhouse. We didn't even talk about America Fest, did we? Oh, man. Oh, shit.

MerlinThe turning points? That was really weird. That was... Gosh, there's so many times I wish Max were here. That's one. I would love to get Max's thoughts on.

AlexSo fucking insane.

MerlinOh, my God. And when they brought out the thing that I retweeted, a lot of people retweeted. The person who said, I've seen a lot of weird shit, and this is like the weirdest. And it was like, first of all, it was Kyle Rittenhouse. But then they brought out, it was like one of those moments where you're like, and here are all the surviving veterans of, you know, the Tet Offensive or whatever. Like, here's all the surviving veterans. You know what I mean? And like all these people come out, and they're wearing medals, and they have hats on. You're like, oh, my God, you're so great. And they're like, and here's all the people, like media figures who tried to speak.

Remember, did you see this? And they all walk out on stage together like the end of Les Mis.

AlexI have not seen it yet. I just learned about this Monday. Because I was like, I'm just going to tune out and enjoy my non-Christmas Christmas and get stoned and watch the Pokemon Christmas special. No, it was real talk. It was like great. Like that is, I don't know. the thing that I am not able to fully obviously not just contemplate the thing that I haven't been able to get across or really think about is like Merlin

can't go to Six Flags and do the can't go oh god that sounds so much fun. Have I mentioned that

Merlina lot? I haven't mentioned that a lot have I?

AlexYou haven't but every time I think about it it makes me want to cry how happy like that like I know that you get to do that. It makes me so fucking happy. It makes me so sad that you can't. And also it's a plot of American Dad. The opportunities

Merlinare piling up. We've got Marina coming soon. I wish. But we've got Marina we have tickets for. Also for Christmas I only talk out of school but my lady knows I'm trying not to just always acquire shit and experiences are good and it seemed like at the time the purchasing decisions were made we're going to see John Mulaney in April. And my wife and I are going to go see one of my all-time favorites richard thompson i am so gay bones for she and i to have a date and go see richard thompson but now stack it up right alongside marina and uh six

Alexflags it's like who the fuck knows i mean anyway yeah sorry uh sorry sorry friend yeah i'm probably not gonna see the play that goes wrong because other things have gone wrong i get oh yes this

Merlini think could be a challenge is i think about that episode all the time i think about the Peter Pan episode, the fiasco episode of This American Life. I think about it all the time. Did you ever hear it?

AlexOh, I feel like, wait, no.

MerlinIt's an episode called Fiasco, and it's about a production of Peter Pan that is attended by people, and it causes some problems. I'll find it for notes.

AlexOh, my God. Well, I listened to that Kevin Kelly episode. The Kevin Kelly one should have been dead.

MerlinOh, my God, I love him.

AlexOh, my God. April 2020. oh no that was just last time it aired okay yeah there are so many good episodes from you know like before I had internet or radio

MerlinI know my friend Tony first time I visited San Francisco in 97 my friend Tony who'd gone obviously he was my roommate we'd been to college together and he went to film school in Sarasota I think the very first year that the film school opened in Sarasota when they were still editing on Steenburgen's you know and he had every episode he taped it off of KQED he had every episode of this in 1997 had them all on tapes in one of those college nerd like cassette racks we all had back in the day

I didn't discover it till later but I will find Fiasco for Notes and we super need to listen to that and talk about that

Alexwe need to I'm in the doc now

MerlinKevin Kelly would be on the show wouldn't that be nice wouldn't that be cool

AlexI would just be coming for a half hour or sorry, not an hour and a half. I would just be, oh God, I would soak the apartment of like, well, okay. Wow. You're selling Judy Gemstone. I mean, I was, I was, I love that show so much.

MerlinThere's snail trails on my seat. I went back there and put my hand over.

AlexGod, I love that show.

MerlinKevin Kelly.

AlexI wonder what Kevin Kelly is up to right now. I wonder how Kevin.

MerlinHe's been posting more lately. Yeah. He sent a lovely newsletter update Christmas card like he does every year. He's such a nice man.

AlexOh, mom, I didn't know. He is my. Oh, shit.

MerlinYes.

AlexThousand Truth fans. Oh, no. I mean, I want to be him. Hey, fans of the show. If you go to Patreon.com slash Dubai Friday, you can give us more money to be sad and talk about trauma.

MerlinAnd offset the people who apparently are not giving us money. I don't know what's going on in this goddamn ship. Should we open a store? Maybe I need to run a store. Oh, my God. I could sign the playing cards. I could do like the way Roger Stone signs rocks. Maybe I could sign the playing cards. Or I could come to your house and hide them.

AlexThere were nice people who were like, I want some playing cards. And I'm like, hey, actually, guys, literally, I cannot get to them because COVID. I don't know where they are. They are in somewhere.

MerlinYou were talking about Kevin Kelly. I was talking about This American Life and Fiasco, and I interrupted you.

AlexKevin Kelly, This American Life. Thank you, people. Patreon.com slash Dubai Friday. If you are supporting Lindsay Ellison can't anymore, then hey.

MerlinFor example, if you're supporting Accidental Tech Podcast, don't do it anymore. I don't think they need the money.

AlexI wasn't saying don't.

MerlinNo, I am. I am. I mean, Casey said a really sweet thing. I really appreciate it, which is like, oh, I'm one of the people that gives them money. I'm probably going to stop, though. I think we need the money more than they do. That show is very popular.

AlexI mean, I would say any trans person in their 30. Oh, I'll pull that card. hey everybody. How about this? Give me half

Merlinthe money you would give to fucking Syracuse on that show.

AlexOh, you know what? Maybe I can just get...

MerlinGive me all the money for rec diffs.

AlexOh, I could get half... I could get one tit removed. I haven't talked about like... Are you going to be coming on Amazon? Because you're helping... Yeah, because like I could just get... You should see if you can get

MerlinAmazon.me. One tit gone.

AlexAm...

MerlinAmazons have one boob? Am I remembering wrong?

AlexYeah, no. Yeah. Why the last man? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. And also in

Merlinreal life what about gal gadad doesn't she have two she was in massad she she taught krav maga

Alexkrav rangoon what did she teach am i gonna are we doing palestine takes right now oh speaking of oh oh what happened why did my um so scarlett johansson i just went to amazon and it is amazon de what what why why am i a dutch amazon that's gonna be a vpn related thing probably yeah but but but i but i don't i turn all that off for recording because i mean i like if i ever get cucked internet wise it's gonna be when i'm recording a podcast because i have to turn

Merlineverything off i'm uploading season episode seven of yellow jackets right now so because uh somebody who's at home on vacation wants to get uh get through it are you watching yellow jackets i

Alexknow it's it's on the list of uh it's on on the list of merlin media actually i think we've worked through everything except Merlin Media. We'll see about that. Sorry, Yellow Jackets and... God, what was...

MerlinHave you watched Buffy?

AlexThe other day, Matt asked, has Merlin seen Buffy?

MerlinThe first four seasons are empirically bad, but it's a musical one. You guys... Sorry, Matt. Sorry, Matt. Cut that.

AlexCut that.

MerlinCut that.

AlexSorry, Matt. Sorry, Matt. Sorry, Matt. Sorry.

MerlinI just couldn't get into it. I think I missed my window. I feel like me going, You should really check out Facts of Life. You have to understand. It's at a girl's school. My God. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. What's her name? Who's the woman I love? Catherine Hahn. Catherine Hahn as Joe. Woof. Did you see the recreation of the show?

AlexIs this yellow jacket? No.

MerlinDisney does this thing that's really weird. Disney Channel. I've only seen one episode of this. There may be others. It's called Live Before Studio Audience, which is also the first episode of a TV show. Oh, it's also WandaVision, the first episode. But they're doing a thing where they do these wackadoo, silly recreations of old TV show episodes. And I didn't want to love it. But they did a two-parter with Norman Lear there and the guy from The Man Show, Jimmy Kimmel, right? So Jimmy Kimmel and Norman Lear. And they recreated an episode of Facts of Life.

And they recreated an episode of Different Strokes. And it's got very funny cameos. Like the – I don't want to – y'all aren't going to watch this. Why would I worry? So Facts of Life, show I loved as a kid. I had such a crush on like three different women on Facts of Life, especially Joe.

AlexThis is, I'm, you take the good, you take the bad. That song, this is that.

MerlinYeah. You know what? In fact, you know what? I'm just going to say you check this out. The cast is pretty fucking funny. Ann Dowd may have outdone herself. She may have outdone the guilty remnant woman. She may have outdone her role as Aunt Lydia. She nails Mrs. Garrett so fucking hard, and she's just up there acting her little heart out. Also, Jason Bateman and Will Arnett, who played brothers on Arrested Development, are in this episode.

Jon Stewart is in that episode, and it's very fucking funny. Oh, yeah. It's just wall to wall. Kevin Hart plays Arnold Drummond in the Different Strokes episode. Snoop Dogg is in the Different Strokes episode. Damon Wayans plays Willis it's stunt casting and it's dumb fun it's exactly the kind of shit I feel like Disney should be taking a flyer on kind of like that Kristen Bell show with the musical people like you know Kristen

Alexoh oh fuck I Encore that was the show I watched when I was hungover from my holiday episode yeah oh that was good actually now alright you've actually gotten me interested

Merlindo you think her and Catherine Han have ever kissed and if there are other photos

Alexso I really you know what I hope there are no photos everyone should kiss Kristen Bell so hard lovingly I can't even I mean do you know who she's married to for sure and I bet they have no shame in that

Merlindon't talk to him he's baiting

Alexdon't bother me a baiting

Merlinshut you dumbass shut your he's great in idiocracy then he's got that podcast I don't listen to

Alexalright All right. Okay. Okay.

MerlinOkay.

AlexChallenge. Okay. Cut that. Oh, parking jobs.

MerlinParking jobs. Is that like a hand job, but with a break?

AlexIt's... You listened to the most recent... Have you listened to the most sunny... Oh, my good Lord in heaven. I am on... Have you listened to the most recent episode? No. No, I saved them up because they're so short, and I go through five at a time.

MerlinRight now, I just finished Jihad, and I'm on... Oh, shit. I'm spacing. What is the one I'm listening to? It's probably right here. it is i am on i love this show too too much i am oh i'm on dennison d go on welfare

Alexokay well so so you've um heard the irl gang fight about uh parking situations and like uh how okay maybe not hey anyway i don't know if i have i've heard the thing like four different

Merlintimes i've heard they didn't know they were allowed to ask for an office so fucking funny

AlexOkay, that made me feel less insane about the idea of like, well, you should have known there was a toxic workspace. And it's like, how the fuck are you supposed to know if that's like...

MerlinThat's true about so many things that we... So many things. So many things we're in retrospect you see as being... And I'm not saying...

AlexHow are you supposed to know to ask for a place?

MerlinWell, and I just want to be clear, I'm not speaking directly to your situation or example, except to say there's a lot of things in life you don't realize were a little abusive until it's in the rearview mirror and you're older. And you're like, oh, shit. Adults aren't supposed to act like that. Oh, my God. Yeah.

AlexWell, and now I'm trying to appreciate all of the times where I've asked for something. Like the same time where I feel like, ah, the good old days for stuff, like where you did ask for an office. And I don't like I'm like, you know what? Another challenge. appreciate your offices uh but yeah that that show makes me feel so sane and i don't know what that says yeah i don't know what that says about me we'll put it in show notes uh just recommending

Merlinif you enjoy sunny and it's okay if you don't it's always sunny podcast which according to the web page i looked at yesterday is not an official podcast although given that it's the three well the main creator and the two other creators the three people who run the show it seems like it's pretty official, but I guess it's not by FX. Maybe they, you know what it is? FX didn't get enough of an opportunity to brand it. This is a bit in our

Alexhouse where you're like, oh, you saw this by FX.

MerlinWell, hey, I think FX did this. And then the show starts and says, FX, fearless.

AlexAnd Emma and I go, oh, I think FX made this.

MerlinFX really, they are so horny for their identity.

AlexFX on Hulu. I give them a pass. If they keep allowing the shows that they produce to be the shows that they produce,

Merlinlike whatever. I bet John Langrath's a good hang. Do you want to talk about Moe and then do

Alexthe challenge? Moe, well we could have dovetailed right into the challenge because really we've been talking about the challenge the whole episode. Have we? And also I didn't like re-watching it. But we, let's talk about Moe first. Should I pull up this video? Well I can't put this

Merlinin notes because it has my home in it but all I wanted to say is this entire thing cost $80 but we got we got a new Roomba vacuum cleaner.

AlexAdd two zeros. Oh, wait. Okay. I'm going to want to start.

MerlinOkay. It's a...

AlexWait, wait, wait.

MerlinI want to describe it. I want to describe it.

AlexSo we got a new...

MerlinSo part of this was, this is one of those, what did I call my back to work? A message gift? You know, the kind where you're like, but there's also like a gift I say is for the family that's really for me. The part I didn't get to was that I did want... I've had Rosie at the office before, our previous Roomba, And I have a very good relationship with Rosie. Like everybody, especially every white guy who was born in the 60s, my Roomba is named after a robot from a cartoon. Yeah.

AlexSo is mine, except it's named for one of the clowns that holds Archer hostage, Mr. Romper. No shit. Anyway.

MerlinOh, my God. I love that show.

AlexI forget why, but we had a reason at the time. Anyway, go on.

MerlinSo, but I also, based on what I was reading, the increased smarts, the way, you have a Roomba, right? Is it a iRobot brand Roomba?

AlexIt is the true Roomba Roomba.

MerlinThe only reason I ask is they have a lot of, I mean, I have to say it's up there maybe with Nanoleaf where it's like, oh boy, nothing in this area is perfect, but it's pretty fucking good. And like if you have anything like a normal goddamn house, Roombas are really, really cool. and I as a student of smart home things and I'm no I'm not the robot nerd you are but I am as I covered on back to work I am fascinated um by things like smart imprint map I was so happy to

Alexhear you get into like the smart mapping that it's not it's not just me right like you will sit and

Merlinwatch it like learn an area and then like go like stuff I wouldn't something would not occur to me because I'm not an AI as far as I know, is like it'll go like, okay, I know there's a hole here that gets me into an area. And then, but then there's something wrong and I think there might be more area. I'm going to go outside this room, through another room, into another room because you never know, there might be another hole into that area. Like it basically, it discovers doors. It makes connections.

I do sometimes wish I could just have an eraser tool to say like completely relearn this area. But so anyway, the idea is, and again, I didn't get to this with Dan, but the reason to get this $80 in technology, one of the things is, guess what, Alex? You can set it up. So, okay, so one thing that's a little frustrating, but also kind of cool and interesting, I get it. There's a different map for each device. So Rosie that comes to the office, like, has a map, right? So Sucky, the name of our new vacuum, Sucky develops a map separate from Rosie.

squirty the mop develops a map different from rosy and sucky with that said you start naming shit whatever right you start putting down little things and guess what you can say once it's learned an area you could say when you're done vacuuming the kitchen send the mop to clean the kitchen the same way that you can create you know about this the same way you can create favorites for, you know, groups. Like, we have one favorite.

Our most basic favorite is, like, vacuum, definitely vacuum under where the counter is and in the kitchen. And then kind of just when the cat was alive, RIP, like, vacuum the hallway near her box. And it would do that every day. That was the most basic one. Do that at, like, six or seven at night, right? And I've been so excited about Squirty. And Squirty arrived. Squirty's so quiet. Squirty is so little. Really? Oh, yeah. And Squirty's lower profile. So Squirty gets into more shit. Squirty comes with, you can do just a dry sweep,

like sort of like a rag mop for cleaning up a dusty floor. You can do a wet boy, and then you put in some cleaner, not too much cleaner because it makes the floor sticky. You can actually hear my Crocs squeaking in this because the floor is squeaky. But I told you how much I love Squirty. Squirty, who immediately reminded me of Moe. in the movie WALL-E, which we then re-watched this weekend because it's the best Pixar movie. And it more and more reminds me of...

Would you consider watching this with me? I wish I could put... You know what? If I can, I will make a new video that makes me look good instead of making me look bad. And I will put that up.

AlexOkay, this actually... I haven't... I mean, I have not watched... 25 seconds.

MerlinI just want you to see the question Dan asked, which is a great question. How does it not just squirt all over whatever? like because it has ways of knowing this is not carpeting or so excuse me knows that this is not a flurry floor that this is carpeting uh maybe to a fault because it has trouble getting over thresholds but i want you to watch the way squirty figures out whether it's okay to squirt here it's so gentle 25 second video and we'll do it on a three two one go yes three three two one go

I love it so much hear me squeaking

Alexyes

Merlinthinking

Alexso much quieter than mine

Merlinso you have them up

Alexno no I have a

Merlinyou have a Saki yeah just a Saki

Alexoh

Merlinit goes it goes back once one squirty length it squirts and then goes forward one squirty length and it does the entire floor in rows like this.

AlexHow adorable is this? Oh, look. It's so cute. Oh, my God. It's so good. And you, I mean, you mentioned this too. The amount of, like, the sensors in this, there are some of it. It's a reason it costs up to $80. It's because these sensors are absolutely wild.

MerlinCables and shoelaces are still a problem.

AlexYeah, I was actually going to say.

MerlinSucky has gotten stuck on an A6 shoelace twice in the last week. But, I mean, the shit like detecting, all kinds of stuff that it detects. And it's gotten, now the new one, the new $80 model has gotten so much smarter about detection. It's so much faster. You know how sometimes it just needs to go from here to there and it just needs to haul ass? It goes so fucking fast to different areas. It moves around. And it's now D-shaped instead of, D's vacuums. It's now D-shaped instead of round.

Alexso now it can get into a fucking game.

MerlinIt can actually help clean a wall. You wouldn't know how to look at this. But it'll actually sweep your wall a little bit but it really gets in there. And the spinny brush is so much. Oh my God, it's also good. It's really super easy to clean. Oh, and the rollers. Go look online. I'll secretly send you my $80 version. It's got super big wide rollers almost the length of the device. Oh, it's so good.

AlexOur $20 version. version. No, it's like the $50 version. It's like the, because it sucks, it's a sucky, like it has the tower, you know?

MerlinWe got the tower too. Well, if I did, that was an extra $10.

AlexYeah, yeah. And the tower itself was a game changer. Do you ever look at the

Merlininsides? When it's full, do you ever open it and look at the insides? Yes. I live for it. I live for the opportunity to take out the bag and look at all the shit that's in there. It's a journey, man. It's a fucking journey. It basically looks like somebody dropped a lot of cat food into a bag of pubes.

AlexIt's, well, God.

Well, I mean, my enthusiasm for this product was initially like, yay, robot.

Merlinum and then but like fun um fun um uh novelty right it was it was it was alex excited about

Alexrobots but then it became oh my god alex's allergies are so much better just from running this thing twice a week because cat hair oh no shit that's so cool yeah because matt god love like he would do a ton of like uh swiffering sweeping all that bullshit but just having a reliable, oh God. And I'm just, I just think about the smart hominess of like, all right, I want my co-way who's named Conway, the air purifier to be like, oh. I always want to say

MerlinConway. I'm looking at mine right here.

AlexYeah. He's named Conway.

MerlinIf I sound different and like a lot better, it's because I've been deionizing. Or ionizing. I'm not sure what it does. I cannot tell any difference.

AlexOh, I absolutely can. And I want it to be able to... What?

MerlinBecause when you turn ionizing on, it differently charges things.

AlexOh, I'm sorry. No, no, no. I'm sorry. I thought you meant like a difference between if it's been off for like a day or on for a day, like the unit itself. Oh, no, no.

MerlinJust talking about General Conway. They're also nice for, it also acts, I mean, like Lifehack, makes for a pretty good white noise machine.

AlexYes.

MerlinAnd mine is on an Eve Energy so that at 8.55, it turns off the Conway in our bedroom. And then at 5.05 p.m., 17.05, as I say, it turns it back on. And it's always on 2. And 2 is the perfect volume. Otto's nice. Now, Otto, don't trust Otto. Otto is the real person who really runs the ship, runs the axiom.

AlexBut... Oh, is Otto cucking me?

MerlinThis is one of those devices, though, where like, you know, there should be I want a name for this and I want it to be super clear. Like the way that like things are rated for level of greenness. Before I buy anything else ever again, I want to know, like, first of all, I would like the dumb version of this. I would like the version of this that is not smart. But I want it to be very clearly labeled about whether the settings, power and everything persist between power off and on.

AlexYes. Yes.

MerlinBecause there's so much shit where like, like we have the dumbest gift that I got as a joke for my family, but mainly for my wife and me, a fake fireplace. Okay. I bought this fake fireplace.

AlexThat's so dumb. That's adorable.

MerlinOh, my God. Because I thought it was going to be like when I was a kid and you had the fake cardboard fireplace with the aluminum foil in it and the flicker bulb. Similar to that, this is a fake fireplace with a fake log. It's an utterly implausible fireplace. but it does make pretty lights and it has two levels of pushing out heat oh my god oh my god it actually produced it's a heater that looks like a fireplace that's a oh that's so cute downside one it pulls down a lot of fucking power um downside two it's one of those goddamn devices

where it does not persist in settings and state between you know what i mean power things so like For example, none of my Dyson fan things and heaters do that well. My dumb old rotary cheapy fan doesn't do that. I still have to hit a button to turn on the fan. The Conway, the Co-way does do that, and I love it very much.

AlexYes.

MerlinI wish there was a way to say, I don't know. It feels very Marco to want this, but I want the dumb version. But I want the dumb version to be just smart enough to remember what happens when you hit power on. Now, there's a partial hack here, which is you could tell Eve Energy, hey, Dingus, turn off the fireplace. And then immediately say turn on the fireplace. So you turn off the fireplace, but you've reset the power state to on for power flowing, even though it won't turn on. And that way you don't get into that terrible situation. You know what I mean? That terrible smart home dead end where something's turned off and you can't turn it back on without turning it on like a monster.

AlexMm-hmm. That's why I keep gaff tape over our light switches, because otherwise the whole system falls apart.

MerlinWhoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And you're a Hugh house?

AlexYeah.

MerlinOh, have I got a game changer for you. The Lutron Caseta Dimmer. Have you seen it?

AlexOne is on the way. Oh, we talked about this. Supply chain, yay.

MerlinYou strap, supply chain, you strap that shit on? Game changed. Oh, shit, it's so great. Because first of all, it locks the light switch. It's a dimmer switch. It locks it into, and it works on an upside down one if you live in a house from the 20s. You strap this on to a light switch where normally before I actually had purchased plastic covers to like, family and housekeeper, please do not turn this off. Like, no, no, no, no, no. But now you strap it on. It's a dimmer switch. And now it pairs very easily through Friends of Hue with your Hue app.

And now you've got a dimmer. It's got a button. It's got a turner. It's got a turner, and the turner works.

AlexOh.

MerlinYou can have the turner work across up to three rooms.

AlexOh, my God. Okay, that's very, ooh. But it's also, you strap it on, you know what I'm saying? Anyway, that's Moe. I'm very familiar. My God. I love Moe so, oh, gosh.

MerlinAll right, get to Eminent. Directive. Classified. it's interesting to me. First of all, Hello Dolly is not a very good movie. Sorry. I said it. Hello Dolly is not a very good movie, but also it's so interesting to me. Like the one thing, well, obviously two things for me. Um, I grew up with Hello Dolly on eight track at my house because I grew up with musicals on eight track. That's just how we rolled. And, um, I very much think of it as, as a, if I, you ask, say, what is Hello Dolly? I would say, well, secondarily it's the guy who becomes the Phantom of the Opera,

which is kind of weird, but it's a Barbra Streisand movie. No question. It's a Barbra Streisand movie musical, right? You ever notice Barbra Streisand is not in any of the scenes that they show in WALL-E? Which I think is interesting. I think they didn't want to have to pay Barbra Streisand. Or maybe Barbra Streisand did not want to appear in the movie, WALL-E. But it's weird that a movie I think of as for above Michael Crawford, it's fucking Barbra Streisand. You know, put on your sign of their clothes, there's lots of world out there.

AlexOut there!

MerlinThere's a world outside of Yonkers, Barnaby! I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I

her pool.

AlexBut she's not. There's the scene

Merlinfrom the top of the movie, like two minutes into the movie, where they're going to go to, you know, they're not going to come home until they've kissed a girl. There's that part with Barnaby and Michael Crawford. And then later on, there's the beautiful moment in the park where Michael Crawford is with the pretty girl and he's singing and only takes a moment.

AlexI haven't seen this movie for like a decade. Wally? Hello Dolly. Oh, don't worry. It's not good. Actually, I don't know.

MerlinAnd somehow Mame is worse.

AlexSo it's all.

MerlinYou took them out of the car. Mame. Am I still an honorary gay, be honest? I was an honorary lesbian. Am I an honorary gay man now, too?

AlexI don't know. Because, hmm. Well, I'm not a gay man, so I can't speak on that topic.

MerlinOh, or can't you? Will you later? After you come back from Michigan, will you be able to say?

AlexThat is, that's the thing. It's like the slurs is 50-50. of I get the dykes in the hard

Merlineverybody out of my way I just want to feed my birds

Alexthis is going to be a real

Merlineasy quickie because you did the challenge and didn't like it I didn't do the challenge even though I did the challenge when it was first a show. The challenge this week was to watch a very, I think, a very good Black Mirror, at least it seemed a good episode, called, is it 15 Million Merits?

Alex15 Million Merits. We're always looking at their phones. It's from the first season of Black Mirrors, and it's where a character it's like, oh, they seem to, all these humans seem to be living in a compound.

MerlinWhat's going on? These people have to ride bicycles all day. What is it? Is this a punishment for something? And then I think we do learn that they're basically generating power.

AlexYeah, they're generating power for the place they live, supposedly.

MerlinAnd they're compensated in, you know, e-bucks.

AlexYeah, and it's basically like they're playing a Wii Fit game all day, which is a bike to get coins to either buy porn or appear on a reality show or a place.

MerlinBut you can also, but like one way it is still true. And like this is coming from a father whose daughter said, I don't have enough money to buy the haircut that I want right now. And I was like, you're buying a hairstyle? So you're in this little cell when you're not on your bike generating energy. We meet a guy who's done a good job with saving his e-bucks. And then like, what can you buy with your e-bucks?

AlexThat's the thing. You can buy the, you can't buy the opportunity to live in a nicer or bigger spot because the idea is all of these credits that you can buy to enhance the space you're in that is underground and you can you can possibly use it to change jobs like and you can but you

Merlinare allowed to buy the version that doesn't have special offers right yeah like you don't have to

Alexsee an ad on your fake for us right yeah you can make your life hulu plus basically except

Merlinunfortunately there are certain contractual obligations where we have to show you ads the

Alexwell that's the thing the whole like metaphor doesn't I mean it holds up but it's kind of like I don't know rewatching it was like alright I get it it's fine

Merlinit's not as razor sharp as it felt and I'm gonna bring the John Syracuse of Plummer problem into this which is that like you know Charlie Brooker is how he is if you ever read his columns or watched any of his other wonderful shows I fucking love this guy it's a little bit of a bit that he's such a curmudgeon about technology because his 50 video games that changed the world is fucking great. And nobody who knows nothing about video games could have talked about Shadow of the Colossus in that way. Have you seen it?

50 games that changed the world? Yes. Don't you think he's good? Or his Newswipe with Philomena Kronk?

AlexPhilomena Kronk, that's her name. I think he's brilliant. I think it's just one of those things that hit harder.

MerlinBut there's a plumber problem because he's not a native of that. And he looks at it like a grandpa in some ways.

AlexYeah. Which I think was weirdly effective.

MerlinYes. In that first episode with the pig, which is such an ambitious first episode on so many fucking levels.

AlexI can't believe you made Emma watch that. I didn't make her do anything. All right. I make money in problems.

MerlinI don't make children. That's funny. You should use that. I haven't made anything in years. I write in bullets and talk about dicks. I should be on a bike. God damn it. Special offers.

Hey!

Show notes

Transcript

269. This Shitbox

Show notes

Transcript

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