296. Lesbian Emeritus

AlexI have a slight problem. This week's challenge was do something with intentionality. And my intention was to show up for this podcast on time. Like I was ready to record Dubai Friday at 1159 Central already, except about 20 minutes before that. Merlin asked if we could start it 45 minutes later.

So I was like, fuck, this doesn't work because then I'm not actually doing anything intentional. I'm just sitting here for a while. so I said I was gonna go for a jaunt which I did I paced around my apartment which was difficult with crutches but I jaunted so I never lied um but I thought let me just now intentionally ghost Merlin and see how long it takes him for him to realize that I'm not going

to show up at the new specified recording time, you know? And then, uh, but, but he was too nice. And okay. Um, uh, I'm just going to tell Merlin we can record in five minutes. Okay. He texted me counting down to 12 minutes after. I put a lot of intent into this. gonna keep recording until then I'm gonna have 12 minutes of maybe silence the silence and some

bleep bloops now I don't know what I should do though because my intention was to make him wait but am I making him wait if he is again knowing what to expect and when he should be at his computer I feel like he hasn't waited enough or I haven't put enough intention behind this or this isn't funny to anyone but me, which is the most likely scenario.

This is Due by Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge, set a small intentionality. hello good after morning merlin man how are you today i'm fine alex how are you i am great i did not get very much sleep but based on feedback that seems to be when our episodes are the best

So, good after morning. How have you been? How's your iced tea? That, that, I don't want to project anything onto that. But I heard, do you want to share with, with the pod? What was that?

MerlinHello.

AlexGood morning. Good afternoon.

MerlinDo you ever listen back to what it sounds like when you do that?

AlexYeah.

MerlinYou sound, you sound, you sound like you've been called into a very stern nun's office and you know you need to confess. Well, let's be honest. You need to confess to several things, but you're not sure if any of them are relevant, but you're just going to keep talking until someone seems less mad at you.

AlexYeah, yeah. What do I need to say next to make everyone happy? It's okay, it's okay. I don't need to get married. It's okay, I'm sorry. I just, no.

MerlinIsn't that a pretty photo, though? I sent you a photo of two ladies getting married.

AlexYou did, and you argue,

Merlinthat oh boy okay all right all right okay i'm like andy cohen um go ahead and say what i said and give me camp you're like andy cohen and one of those real housewives for you have you ever watched any john mulaney at all do you even know where your bits do you know where your bits come

Alexfrom i don't do that i don't do bits i don't have bits i'm a very pro smiths but no bits which is

Merlinnow a bit but when you say okay okay and then i say okay okay you don't you don't you don't

Alexyou don't remember what that's from okay okay thank you for your money goodbye

Merlinoh boy i can't i can't i are you keeping track of all this i have no idea where we are it's

AlexIt's fair use. It's fair use.

MerlinI don't think you know what that means. It's like Kramer in write-offs. Do you even know what a write-off is? Just write that off, Jerry.

AlexOh, boy. Links to my financial advisor.

MerlinOkay, okay, okay. Listen. Listen. It's fun to surf on the rats and garbage, but sometimes we need to put our feet back onto the sidewalk.

AlexI don't know that reference, or is that you being funny?

MerlinSo you're going to sit there and spew whatever it is that you said for the last two minutes and 38 seconds. And then you're going to criticize me for a wackadoo analogy.

AlexI'm not criticizing. I'm not criticizing. I'm not criticizing.

MerlinI don't do that.

AlexI was just asking because it was a very creative. It was creative. And I was wondering if you made it up or if it was a method.

MerlinI can tell you why I'm thinking about it. And I've avoided talking about this because I don't talk about things until they're over. and I don't like explaining myself. You know, I'm becoming, as Tim Gunn would say, can I just say I'm becoming very editorial.

AlexOh.

MerlinHave you noticed that I'm becoming very editorial? I'm getting a very strong POV about things. I'm developing the kind of clarity of, say, a Howard Beale in network. I think, you know what I'm saying? Open your windows.

This will come out, what, on Thursday? All right, I'll risk it. Yes. All I'm going to say is this, you're not allowed to ask me any questions about it. I just got messages from my family in a subway station in New York because they're on their way to see a Broadway show.

AlexOh, I won't ask. I won't do it. I won't do it. I'm just really happy.

MerlinSo you've seen some John Mulaney. You never remember J.J. Bittenbinder.

AlexI know. Do you understand? He was a man most acquainted with... He was a man most acquainted with misery. Yeah, yeah. You know, he disputed John Mulaney's claim that he ever wore a cowboy hat to school.

MerlinOf course he did. That's on brand. Oh, you're saying because of the Lord?

AlexBecause of, oh.

MerlinI don't know. I mean, is it disrespectful? Like a true cowboy always doffs his hat?

AlexI don't know. You'd have to ask J.J. Bittenbinder. He's seen a lot. I don't know. I don't know. This is just what I read on the internet.

MerlinYou take a little ravioli side fist and you punch out the line. I think they're waving. You know what's funny is doing other people's comedy bits. You kindly tooted that link to the You Look Nice Today Parlor Parlor show. And I mean, I like to think it's a form of reintegration or as what's his name? Kirby Puckett, Jack Kirby. As that one guy says, everything's a remix. That's the way I like to think about it. And off of this confession, you're not allowed to ask any questions about this and you're not allowed to find it amusing or sweet.

AlexOh, my God. Did you just cut out? No. Cut out what? No, this isn't allowed. This isn't allowed. Oh, no. If this is being done to me, I deserve it. I deserve it if it's true. Are you muted? I deserve it if this is happening for real. I deserve it. I wish I could help Alex right now. I deserve it. Oh, I can hear you now.

MerlinAlex is Spock, and I'm Kirk, and I'm just putting my hand up against the glass saying, I love you. Oh.

AlexThis is honestly proof that everything I was taught in Catholic school is true, because I deserve all of this.

MerlinIt is known. And so where was I?

AlexI hear you.

MerlinJJ Bindler.

AlexYes, there you are. Did it happen again? Yeah, there you are. No, you are.

MerlinFuck me gently. What's happening, Alexandra? Why can't we do a show anymore? Why am I yelling?

AlexI realize we need a safe word for if I think you've cut out. How about fuck? okay okay that's the new okay okay so so i said fuck after don't a lot of people say say um

Merlinuh grunt twice i mean like should we have our own very special oh oh should it be should it be like okay so you know oh my god we're so deep in the stack you know you may know about this i've always been fascinated by this since early in their relationship john and amy jane gruber have discussed how they would deal with the face-off situation. Do they have a protocol for dealing with a face-off situation? How would you know whether this is me or somebody else?

AlexYes.

MerlinRight? Or you hear those people who are like, listen, I mean, I think this is a real thing. Like if you are on the other side of the phone and, you know, you can't be too cute. Fuck.

Fuck. Did it go? Did it die again?

AlexFuck me. All right. Fuck. This is not. Grunt, grunt.

MerlinGrunt, grunt, grunt.

AlexI said, fuck, I'm going to open Zoom because I was just on a Zoom call and this was fine and my internet speed is fine.

MerlinCould you do me a favor though, Alex? Could you write down everything that we've brought up so we can come back to it? Could you do that?

AlexI have a list. We have lesbians. We have wedding fashion. We have- JJ Bentonbinder. My family's in New York. We already got that. We already passed that. Yes, your family's in New York. I'm wearing suspenders. I'm wearing suspenders. I made iced tea. You look nice today. You look nice today. I love that. I love that. All right. We're going to do this and do it until one more far.

MerlinHey, and this is a musical interlude. Ah, this is a musical interlude. Let's re-transition.

AlexJust cracked my knuckles. I'm human beings are disgusting. At least I am. That was an unfair characterization of it. I think humans are actually, I can't believe I'm going to say this.

Somewhat underrated as a species. Well, as a species on earth.

Speaker AHmm.

AlexNo, I take it back. We're either incredibly underrated or shocking, shocking shockingly overrated but it would be interesting if like we were sure like there i am quite confident there is a ton of other species that are conscious what or what we call quote intelligent life um and they experience consciousness but i think they

are more likely to know that one another exists, whereas we're just like, yeah, we're the only ones. Hello, Merlin man!

MerlinYou did the thing again, didn't you?

AlexWhat thing? I was just testing my levels. Why are you talking to the audience? No, I was talking to Quinn. I was talking about the pretty picture. The pretty space picture.

MerlinIt really kind of takes the air out of the sails, doesn't it?

AlexOh, it does. This is terrible. I can't believe people give us money for this.

MerlinThis is not the show, Alex. We've got to find our way. It's not the show.

AlexCome in. Come play. You know what?

MerlinYou think I'm a Dracula?

AlexOh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no. You're much sexier than Dracula. You would be one of the hot vampires in-

MerlinOh, you want to see my new haircut? Yes. I gave myself a home haircut. And see, I can't say what I think. that's that's internet business baby but i think let's just say i think i accidentally became katie lang in the 90s and i'm kind of into it oh oh remember that tumblr about uh

Alexold men who look like aging lesbians i oh you we've we've discussed this you are an honorary a lesbian. You say

Merlinthat, but have you cleared that with HQ?

AlexOh, I guess I'm not a lesbian, but we do have

Merlinsome... Oh, shit. You know what you are. Get ready. I'm stealing

Speaker Avalor. No, hang on.

MerlinLesbian Emeritus.

Jazz break. Okay, listen. Listen. Okay. Okay. Here's what happened. I'm going to address the audience because it doesn't matter to anyone else, but it matters to me, to quote the great John Syracuse. And now he would probably say so close because I quoted that wrong. I said last night, well, when John and I recorded our next T-shirt, it should just be so close because I always get the quote a little wrong.

AlexOh, we never plugged your T-shirts. Gosh, dang it.

MerlinWe record this program on a more or less weekly basis on Wednesdays at varying times. Later on in the episode, I will officially make the pitch to Alexandra that we should officially move the time to 1 p.m. Move the cat to 1 p.m. Central Time. Because it just my body wants to sleep longer, whether or not I recorded with Squidward. My body wants to hang out. I stay up later than I should. Long story short, I'll make that pitch later, but not now.

When we record the show for some reason.

AlexSo that wasn't the pitch?

MerlinNo, no. That was me, as I say, teasing the pitch.

AlexOh, that was like the log line. So that wasn't the deck. That was the log line. All right. All right. Voice log line.

MerlinAll right. Proceed. It was going to be such a good show. You could tell it was going to be good, right? It was going to be really, really good. How long has it been now? probably definitely two and maybe five weeks or so, we keep encountering weird problems with our connection. And the reason that matters is we are doing something called, this is industry talk, we're doing something called a double ender, which is not as bad as it sounds. It's not a double dong, although it could be. What we are doing is we are using an application like Skype

or Zoom as basically like a monitor. And then we each record both of our sides on the other end, which theoretically gives you a cleaner recording and gives our dear, sweet, long-suffering editor Quinn, you know, a belt and suspenders vis-a-vis audio. And at first it was because there was a known issue with your Wi-Fi, correct?

AlexCorrect. Do not have Wi-Fi.

MerlinBecause you don't plug in your computer when you record a podcast.

AlexNo, now I do. You're like a Roderick. Now I do. This was long ago that I did it. But not only was our Wi-Fi out, our entire network was out. So I was just on my phone.

MerlinBut it wasn't like it was that worst kind. It was like the time I had to break into a house to cycle somebody's router in Rhode Island. It was like it's worse than no internet, which is barely internet, right? And it was just enough. You know what they say on Ted Lasso, it's the hope that kills you. It was just enough to think that we could record a show because, hey, as everybody said, don't worry I'm recording on my end but but and so I apologize to you the listener if either there's too much velocity that isn't properly captured or not enough velocity because we keep

getting cock block by cock block by Comcast oh zoom's giving me ads now okay cool close that I'm really sorry Alex so what Alex and I did what had happened was we I I'll speak for myself I I went all the way down. I went downtown, which means I unplugged the Eero. I unplugged the surfboard or whatever it's called this week. And I did a full onyx all the way down, busted my cash.

Blast my cash. I did all of that. And then we started. And I got 900 down and 17 up, which is the spec.

So is this the show?

AlexNormally, I am reticent to... Normally, I claim full responsibility because I just assume it's always my fault because it always is.

MerlinI hope you grow out of that.

AlexWell, however, this past week, I've not been having this issue. So, neither on Skype or Zoom, and I have used both.

MerlinProbably my fifth reference to John Syracuse at least this episode because he's always on my mind. like that Willie Nelson song.

AlexOh, you are a lesbian.

MerlinHe coined a term for this. I've never heard a better term for this than the term that he has for this. You might probably know it. Internet weather.

AlexThat's good. Right?

MerlinYour climate is what it is. Yes. Boy, I'm butchering this. But my climate is the nice people at Comcast. And they have their reasons. And I've gotten some insight from the inside. There are people on the inside pulling for something higher than 17 up. But so far, no good. 17 up is obviously going to affect what you hear from me. Certainly affects when my Plex wants to run a 4K movie from a block away. But internet weather. It's just the climate might be 900 down, but the weather is, no, scattered showers.

You know, there are warnings of gales and trafalgar. You know what I'm saying?

AlexMy favorite response from Comcast when the, not the whole neighborhood, but a block or so of folks were having this issue from, you know, what we could tell and from what Comcast's own website said. But they assured us, oh, it will be, you'll be back up after regular work hours. So, and I'm like, so you're doing maintenance.

MerlinBut they didn't tell you what. OK, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. But like what is compound question, counselor? What is significant about that? Is it that there will be less traffic and it shouldn't be a problem? That's how long we think it'll take to fix? Or we're just giving you a fairly arbitrary number that we're pretty sure we can hit?

AlexI believe it is number B. By the last one. Yes. And with the implication that they said we will be done working on it by end of day, your time or Eastern time. So then I'm like, oh, OK.

MerlinMaybe they don't know what's wrong either. I mean, it's nice to think they know what's wrong, but maybe they just don't know what's wrong.

AlexOh, well, there was a time back in the day where you would call and they would say they would admit we're not sure or admit that. Yeah, it'll probably. And this is like when I was in college. You're like, oh, when traffic goes down after classes are done, you should be able to stream again. Like which on a campus that probably.

MerlinWell, were you on campus at the time?

AlexYes, indeed.

MerlinI bet that's it. Yeah. So you were – I'm sorry. I'm going to say something. You still – stuff like LimeWire was still around then, right? Not really.

AlexNo.

MerlinWere you doing torrents mostly?

AlexI was. Or rather I knew some people who were still torrenting a lot of things and distributing it.

MerlinBecause if you want to torrent regularly, if memory serves, you've got to keep it up to keep your ratio in order, right? Because don't you get pinged if you're a hog? Like if you're a piggy and you only ever download and don't upload. If you don't, you know, you're seed box. Like wasn't that a thing where you had to keep it up even after you got your Britney Spears record? You still had to keep it running to keep your ratio at, I want to say one, but whatever it was.

AlexIt was considered polite. You know, pirates like to help pirates.

MerlinWell, when they programmatically ding you, that's why people would get a seed box. They would have a computer in the sky where they could just have – they could put popular stuff that everybody wanted. It ran on some very unencumbered, you know, bit of tube. And they got the ratio so high that if memory serves, I don't know if it was with BitTorrent, but I feel like you would get a higher priority on your downloads if you had a good ratio.

AlexExactly. Is that right? Yes, exactly.

MerlinApart from whether you were trying to download something popular or obscure. If one guy in Dutch had the obscure record you want, that was going to take a while no matter what. But that in some ways was what made Napster so brutal on the music industry, I think. And I'm saying Britney Spears because I remember that being an artist who was popular at the time. She still is.

Speaker AShe still is.

MerlinYes. I will leave them alone. Thank you. But the irony was that if something was extremely popular by design, it would get everywhere a lot quicker, right? Yes. More people had it.

AlexAnd that's how Dropbox stopped a lot of piracy because it used to be really easy to upload a – I mean, I've heard you –

MerlinYour 128K variable MP3s.

AlexYep, yep.

MerlinAs opposed to like the 60 gigs of the 4Ks that I see these days.

AlexRight, right. And if you were a person in film school, often you would have two computers just for editing reasons. And I heard that some people had like an 11-inch MacBook Air. Oh, my like favorite laptop ever still. So good. I have it right here.

MerlinWhen you do that, I usually can tell that you're talking about you, but I sometimes can't tell.

AlexI genuinely don't know. Like, I'm so afraid of lawyers.

MerlinBut you say things like, I have been told. You say that a lot. And like, do you have I statements?

AlexAll right.

MerlinThere's no I in Alex title. That's pretty good.

AlexYou know what? You know what? I've decided I'm just going to use the third. I'm going to refer to someone named Alex.

Merlinand i'm not saying that it's my name that's that's definitely not a dissociative disorder

Alexdefinitely normal and fine alex is not having a dissociative disorder so alex would leave their 11 inch macbook air at at their dorm every day to download especially movies because i mean if alex was smart they would sell them for like a couple bucks to their uh like you know not Alex would sell what? What are they doing? Would sell music or the files that they, movies that they bit, BitTorrent.

But unfortunately, Alex wasn't brave enough to sell any pirated media, and they just would try to-

MerlinWhat would ever make you think, what would make them think they should do that? That's so odd.

AlexBecause they- Who sells MP3s? Because it was past LimeWire. I genuinely didn't do that.

MerlinOh, I see. And you want to get that side hustle. So you got to get your grind on.

AlexNo, I genuinely didn't do that. But Alex was able to.

MerlinBuying SEO keyword terms for best Chicago free MD3s.

AlexThey just wanted friends to come over and hang out. And girls thought Alex was pretty cool that they could get a movie that was in an expensive theater.

MerlinSo you're like a really low level, very sweaty, thirsty weed dealer.

AlexYeah. Where you hang out after. Yes, yeah. It was like, yeah, bring some booze and we'll watch Pineapple Express and we don't need to pay. Yeah, come by.

MerlinWe'll do a double ender.

AlexDouble dong. Lesbian emeritus.

MerlinAre double dongs always proportioned the same on both ends or can you give variation in that?

AlexI don't know.

MerlinCan you have a bespoke double dong?

AlexI don't know.

MerlinSee, double dong seems to me like the kind of thing that a guy thinks a lesbian, abrasive lesbians would use. But I imagine there's probably better things.

AlexYou know, we have listeners who, not that I'm addressing them, but we have listeners who are. You're talking about yourself now? No, no, no, no. We're not talking about Alex. We have listeners who are like really nerdy sex people. And I am very intimidated by them. And like hearing.

MerlinThey fuck on a copy of Lord of the Rings.

AlexThank you, Bloodplugue.io. and it is really fascinating to see the perceptions versus the actual technology being implemented in sex guy stuff I don't know what it is I don't know because there are so many stereotypes that do not fit the molds if you say there's not many double ending molds for like dildos and what not to the point where like if somebody there's a friend of a show that often reviews

sex toys and I am i am genuinely very is that you no no sorry is that them is that alex no no no that's uh oh why am i it's kate sloan i don't know why like she has a public persona anyway uh and kate i read all of her stuff because i'm like oh my god how are you so cool and confident that you

Merlincan talk about this on the internet oh wait is this the is this the sexy um like there's somebody

Alexout there never mind i'm not gonna get into this this is this is mb this is mb's wife they got married a while back and are public about it so i'm not being our friend they they mb who used to be the tumbler they yeah yeah yeah oh i know i know that yes but that's not you right no no it is

Merlinnot it's not me and it's not alex well what is what is i don't want to get the fifth person

Alexwhat does fourth person look like no okay i think about this all the time because i mean like it's not a bit i do think about the fourth dimension of consciousness

Merlinwell i mean like if there was that it's not that long ago that a when people said sex toys i think they usually meant either fuzzy handcuffs or a dildo that's that used to be the punch line oh fuzzy handcuffs you're so into kink and um and like oh and here's a here's a dildo and like if there's a man involved oh boy that's really crazy stuff it just it seems to me that like once you have explored that that's the ice age of uh of whole fills is uh is just like a dildo you get

at one of those you know one of those sex stores it's not really very good it's not it's not a good vibrations it's not really you know what i mean it's it's not the prosumer stuff somebody like me or you would want you get the stuff that's more like oh you know what it is it's a joke gift for your wedding.

AlexIt's a Spencer's Gifts type situation.

MerlinThe bridal, what do they call it? The shower?

AlexA bachelorette party?

MerlinSure.

AlexA stag party, mates.

MerlinI think in England they call it a fancy dress. But now today, once you've explored that and you get to the prosumer level, you're going to want the Canon 5D of Dongs.

Speaker AOh.

MerlinAnd you know what I'm saying? And maybe that's not going to be like the super costly one with the white lenses Scott Bourne uses. But like for somebody who's just taking snapshots with their dong, you still you want something more efficacious. And it seems to me like the double dong, part of the problem with the double dong, well, is it really that you both, well, maybe you both want to be penetrated at the same time with the same thing. And that seems more like a bonding exercise or more like a low ropes course than an actual like you take your Hitachi, I take my Hitachi and I'll see you on the other side.

AlexYeah, it does.

MerlinWith babies, you call it parallel play because they don't really have a way. I've done parallel play.

AlexSeparate, separate. Yes. Yeah. Separate, separate.

MerlinYou tend to your seed corn. You tend to your seed corn and I'll tend to mine. That makes we're still farmers sharing a bed. it's not weird but anyway whatever it is that you like and now with the technology today

Alexalex you know kate sloan that's what but here here's the thing where that i get sort of caught oh sorry fifth gender fifth gender fourth no no fourth person person fourth fourth fourth

Merlinlevels of consciousness that is separate from first person is i or me yes second person is a The third person is you, singular, or you, collective. Correct. Correct. Third person is, you know, they, them.

AlexThe they, them, its, theirs, him, hers.

MerlinBut it could be also he, she. So third person is when you describe, it's almost like a third party app. Correct. Except for a person. But is there a fourth person?

AlexSome people are allowed in the app store.

MerlinI see. Interesting. And that all goes to Goldman Sachs.

AlexOh, yeah, yeah. I've been in app review in a long, long time.

MerlinOh, boy. I'm signing my app right now, if you know what I mean. Stuck in review, if you know what I mean.

What's fourth person?

AlexNo, no. I mean, you've thought about this. I have, but not in terms of what the grammar would be. I think of it in terms of a fourth dimension.

MerlinNo, but what is it? Like we say, okay, two dimensions. You got an X and a Y. Third dimension, you got a Z. And the fourth dimension is time, correct?

AlexThat is what I have.

MerlinThe fifth element is love. And the sixth wife is Anne Boleyn.

AlexAnne Peggy. I don't know.

MerlinAnd Peggy and God is seven and God is seven. Okay.

AlexI don't know. I just think about if, I wonder if the fourth. Oh, God.

MerlinCould it maybe be a group of people you don't like?

AlexYou're fucking me up because you're focusing on the grammar aspect. And that's like what the people are like. Am I? Trans people.

MerlinIs there another way I could discuss this with you without employing grammar? What would you recommend?

AlexNow I'm like, oh, all right, grammar is over.

MerlinYou're saying we should do a mind meld. We should do a mental double dog. Yes.

AlexYes. Oh, okay. Yes. I know that I read too many books, but The Candy House is... You said that. I've been told.

MerlinI said you read too much, and I might have said you read too many books. But then why wouldn't you phrase that as, Merlin, you say I read too many books. Why wouldn't you say that?

AlexBecause it has...

MerlinWho are you talking to? Who are you even talking to right now?

AlexAnd Maddie. Sixth person. Oh, yeah, yeah.

MerlinTavi Gevinson, what?

AlexNo, Maddie also says I read too many books. My parents have said I've read too many books my entire life. I should just stop reading books and go on TikTok is what I think. Like maybe I have reverse TikTok brain where the only thing I can consume is like 30 seconds of media or spend an entire day reading the first three Game of Thrones novels, which you are getting into, right?

MerlinI lost my place in Audible and I had to like – I saw the scrubber at the bottom. Well, I can't get into it, but my face was slightly occluded, not because of sex. My face was slightly occluded as I went to return to my Game of Thrones, which I 5% read and many more percent listen to. It's my go to sleep thing. I listen to one chapter of Game of Thrones as I fall asleep. And I hit the thing. I hit the scrubber wrong. I could see from the progress bar that I was – I'm not getting this all for story.

I mean I watch the TV a lot. but you know i i just like i want to i just want to i want a good brand chapter you know i'm saying and i'll um it's so interesting i thought they're like there's no cersei chapters are there it's like it's john ned uh daenerys tyrian but like peter baelish doesn't get chapters it's interesting i keep expecting it didn't occur to me until yesterday when i had to scrub through dozens of chapters of this book that there weren't any cerseys i knew that i was somewhere

after shit went down with Ned. And it was like probably two-thirds of the way through this 50,000-page book. But I accidentally went down. Yo, let's sing to an audible. And then I had to go through and it was still re-downloading because I guess I super fucked up.

AlexOh, God, I hate... Oh, that fucking app.

MerlinThat guy's pretty good, though. All of his older men voices sound kind of the same. He's no Jim Dale, but, you know.

AlexNo. Whoever is reading The Third Body Problem, I... God, the... You already read the first two? No. The three-body problem? No. Fuck you. Okay. There. I'm slow today. All right. Fuck that. Fuck that. They didn't think that was funny. It was funny. I'm just dumb.

MerlinThey put the lotion in my bath stick.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinNow, that's a creepy example, and I know that movie's problematic, but when the man, well, when they have the human with the cool necklaces, has the senator's daughter and the dog in the hole and says i think the quote if memory serves i'm sorry i hope this isn't triggering to anyone but i don't care that much um it puts the lotion

Alexwell maybe you have dog issues you know all right oh spoilers spoilers for the end of silence of the lambs when she ends up taking care of the dog i was like oh thank god that was oh i know

Merlinyou know did you know that does the dog die still exists that that site is still up yeah

AlexI said, should I visit it?

MerlinBecause I mentioned my kid had never heard of it. And I mentioned it because we were watching this really, really internet. We're into dinos right now. And we were watching, it's an Attenborough hosted show. I think it might be on Apple TV+. It might be Nat Geo. But it's like Planet Earth, but it's about dinosaurs. And it's extremely well done. The dinos look really, really good.

Speaker AOh, shit.

MerlinBut they were talking about, no spoilers for the prehistoric times, but, you know, when baby turtles are born and they're scurrying around, you know, that's a meal for, I don't know if it was a T-Rex, but there's like a little T-Rex that's going out and learning how to hunt. The mom is making it learn how to hunt. And my kid goes, oh, my God, I hope the baby turtles don't die. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure the baby turtle. I said, did you know there was once a website called Does the Dog Die where you could find out if there's any? I think they expanded over time, but it was originally about like, does some kind of named pet in this movie die?

And guess what? There was a page on that site for Planet Prehistoric or whatever it's called. And it says, yes, trigger warning, there is some turtle harm in this.

AlexHow cool is that? There's also a website that, oh, I should check if it's up, but can you pet the dog? And it is. Oh, right. In video games, right? Yeah. Yeah, and that also, I mean, both of these websites have informed my viewing and gaming habits. It's very, it's really good.

MerlinI play that game in real life all the time. Where a middle-aged man wearing what looks like, I mean, I basically look like Ignatius in Confederacy of Dunces. I have so many layers on, and I have a funny hat. And by the way, did I mention I'm riding a hoverboard? and I pause too long next to a dog. First of all, anytime I see any dog and the dog sees me, well, I always slow down because I don't want to upset the dog and make it want to chase me. I can outchase, I can outrun most dogs, but I don't want to make the dog upset.

And then what do I say? Every time I pass a dog, I say exactly the same thing. And I say it in this really pathetic voice. I go, hey, buddy. I say that to every dog. And a lot of owners don't like that, but fuck them. I'm not talking to them. I didn't say hey, buddy to you, miss.

AlexAs some parapals may know, my spouse's job is being trans and taking care of basically a broken dog escort, if you will.

MerlinOh, it's like how Tyrion Lannister drinks and knows things.

AlexYes, yes.

MerlinMatt transes and cares. That's not quite as catchy.

AlexIt's not.

MerlinDogs are a ladder.

AlexYes. But there's a lot of people who just love to come up. And you know what? I should ask him. I think that you're fine by just addressing.

MerlinBut when you're walking a bunch of dogs, I think it's – I don't want to fuck with somebody who's got to deal with a bunch of dogs because I think a lot of them aren't really as good at it as they would like to think.

AlexOh, no. Yeah. But – and also, he doesn't – he is a bespoke walker. He does not walk more than one dog at once unless it is a multi-dog household. Yeah.

MerlinOh, so you might get two broken dogs.

AlexYes.

MerlinCarmen says one dog. Here, there are two. So we're talking about persons and sorry about that disconnection. We had a lot of open threads. I laughed at my own jokes on You Look Nice Today.

AlexIt was such a good show. You were a stand-up. Have you ever talked about your brief? I don't want to say this sounds so like shitty, like how, quote, you were a stand-up comic. Like you did a lot of stand-up in the past. Yes.

MerlinNo, not at all.

AlexReally? No, none. You're talking about Stuff with Scott? Yeah, yeah.

MerlinNo, that was, I mean, it seems a little fancy to call it improv, but it was very much similar. It was like, you look nice today plus bits. Because what we learned in you look nice today in brief is that our bits, when we would plan a bit, it was not only not funny, it was catastrophic. Like when we would do, we would come up with a funny bit. Because it was always like, well, when we come out, we didn't get the TJ and Dave, Dave and TJ. How do you say it? Dave and TJ? TJ and Dave?

You corrected me on this before.

AlexOh, you mean Middlevich and Swartz?

MerlinWell, I think they ganked a lot of it from Dave and TJ, but that's fine.

AlexOh, that's right. Okay, yes.

MerlinThey would walk the whole bit, and there's a really good radio lab about this and a movie about them and a whole series of their shows that you can oddly buy on Vimeo, which I did. But those two guys, Chicago legends, walk out on stage with absolutely nothing planned, and they just look at each other. and there's this insane silence and, and they are on stage, but hearing them talk about it is so invigorating to me, how that process works where,

you know, you never want to come out with a bit like you could, you could so easily crush the bunny having a bit, but when he comes out, like what's the one that's in the actual radio lab? It's one of their famous bits where he comes out and they just stand there and he goes something like something like it. He says something like it'll be okay. or it'll pass through. It'll, he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it will. And they keep talking. And eventually you figure out that it's about who's playing on the softball team. You think it's about jobs ending. And then they become each other, each other's characters.

But I, for a long time, didn't like that. I like to come in hot. And so sometimes, you know, and I think it's nice to have a hook to hang something on theoretically, even though it was the ultimate anti-pattern for us. So we would come up with some bit, like we're going to come out and we're going to like, to the equivalent of like the way the Flophouse does, you know, PowerPoint presentations, which are surprisingly funny. But there was, we really hit the nadir. There's one time where Roderick came out and played the song for us

before we started. But to call it improv feels, it's improv-ish. Yeah, I mean, it is. It just feels, I'm pathologizing myself to say that it's improv. But we come out and we talk and eventually it gets funny. And in the case of that parlor parlor, it was really fucking funny. But one time, I don't know if it was in Portland, it was somewhere in the PNW. We really reached our nadir where we thought it would be funny. It was a beautiful, big theater. I remember with this big, tall ceiling. And we thought it would be really funny if we come out and get introduced one at a time.

And it's Scott. And then it's Merlin. And then we introduce Adam. and Adam comes out very gingerly holding and clearly shushing a baby.

AlexOh, I think this was recorded, right? Sorry.

MerlinWell, the thing that we thought would be funny was that he dropped the baby and it turned out that it was a chicken from a grocery store.

AlexAnd how did that play out?

MerlinIt was not funny in any conventional way. And basically all we did was introduce Bloody Chicken to the act. But anyway, the thing is, if you come to Parler Parler and you do utilize our parloristas for a funeral for your grandfather, he will technically become an employee of Parler Parler.

AlexThat is illegal, though.

MerlinAnd his reanimated body will be scooping ice cream.

AlexYeah, I didn't know this, but it is illegal to, like, it's considered desecration of a court. I'm not a lawyer.

MerlinI don't think it is. It depends on the licensing and permitting. And what was Scott's famous phrase? Something like, if there is no bar, you always succeed or something. Anyway, you guys, I'm sorry. Hello and welcome to what would have been a really good episode. What else did we have? Anything else? Any other parentheses we need to close? Hey, the connection's working. That's good.

AlexYeah. I mean, we talked about lesbians. We came out hot for lesbians. Do you like my haircut, Alex? I do. And I like your glasses. This is a classic Merlin look. I can't believe you did this yourself. That's awesome.

MerlinWell, you know, I've been using cat clippers for two years. And for some reason, I couldn't find either set of cat clippers. I was really bummed. I couldn't find them anywhere, even though I'm currently cleaning the house. And so I ordered new ones, new wall brand cordless.

AlexOh, okay. Yes.

MerlinYeah, yeah, yeah. And for the first time that I'm aware of, it comes with a little booklet on how to cut hair.

Speaker AI was like, hmm, maybe I should read this. Okay.

MerlinBecause as you know, I started out just putting the number three on there. I could just close my eyes and think of England. Just keep cutting until everything's a three. Like they say, chop away everything. It's not Michelangelo's David. But this one, I followed the instructions. And it says, okay, pick how short you want the bottom and sides to be. And for me, I thought, okay, I'll start at a three. As they very helpfully note, you can always go shorter, but you can't go longer.

AlexOh, I didn't know that. Okay. All right. We're getting somewhere.

MerlinIt's really good to know. That's true of all trims, if you know what I mean. And so I did three, and it's really hard to do the back. I did three. Okay, so that's up the sides. And then it says, okay, now you're getting to the middle. In the middle, they say take whatever number you had, add one to it, and put that clipper on, and then do it this way. And then, and this is admittedly perhaps the second most generic haircut you can give after just three all over. But I did a three on the bottom and sides. I don't even know what it looks like in the back

because I can't cut hair backwards in a mirror. My brain utterly fails at which direction is which.

AlexWell, you don't need, I mean, you don't need to see it, you know.

MerlinCJP Gray says you are too. Yeah, yeah, and men don't look in mirrors. So what's the difference? And then I got to the top and I mostly did just a four all over. But then I pulled out my flat top comb and thought, oh, I'll try a flat top. And you could tell I didn't do a good job because a whole bunch of the front is actually longer. And it makes a kind of White Cliffs of Dover of the front. And I kind of like the way it turned out for an accident.

AlexIt is genuinely a very nice haircut.

MerlinAnd I'm doing that John Dean thing, though, where I'm looking over my glasses like a blogger in 2002. You ever notice John Dean never looks through his glasses?

AlexYeah. I, unfortunately, do the same thing.

MerlinIt's a real blogger way to go.

AlexIt is.

MerlinBloggers love being photographed looking over their glasses.

AlexYeah. Oh, maybe, maybe. That used to be a thing. Oh, God. Oh, God. Is that what starred? Oh, God. I mean, I just thought I did it because often pictures of me, my glasses are pretty low. That's because I still have a oily teenager's face, basically. But maybe it's because I still aspire to be a blogger. I get that from Amazon. Get one from my sweaty face. Oh, because of the polls.

MerlinBecause of the polls.

AlexThe polls.

MerlinYetis.

AlexI would like to blame it on that, but I just think I'm disgusting and sweaty. But, I mean, it's blogging. so you're very sweaty oh man well that's oh boring but it's not it's not even that hot here in uh chicago right now like it's no you know it's no london but that i think it's miserable it makes me really sad isn't that terrifying really scary and i feel bad i feel guilty about

Merlinit because i feel like it's us it's us you know i mean like us fucking around well certainly asia has had a role but like we've we've fucked around i mean when do people start knowing about when I was younger, it wasn't called climate change. At one point, it was actually called global warming. And before that, you just always talk about the hole in the ozone layer, like in the 80s. Why we gotta stop using hairspray and all that, right? But I have a feeling we have a role in London

Alexheat. I don't have a feeling. Isn't that empirically true? I don't know the numbers. I'm no... It's not called

MerlinAmerican warming.

Speaker AI don't know why that one got me

MerlinI don't know you never know you never know where it's coming from sometimes the call's coming from inside the double dong Jesus

AlexChallenge

MerlinNo.

AlexOkay.

MerlinYou're not going to ask me how I figured out what's wrong with Twitter?

AlexOh, fuck, yeah. See, I closed. After show? After show. Yeah. Hey, go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com, and that will actually take you to patreon.com slash Dubai Friday. And for $5 a week, you can get basically a second. Oh, yeah, Jesus, that's expensive. I would not pay that. For $5 a month.

MerlinStarting at $5 a day, you can help elephants stay in our world. 1-800-HELP-SHRINERS. And all that money goes straight to us. And you get this blanket where you symbolically adopt this blanket that represents your dedication to the dogs who are outside right now.

AlexOh, fuck. Okay, I know that we have not had the best track record with products. Fake charity? Fake charity. Well, and fraud. But I remember the wristband era, like the Livestrong. Oh, like a Livestrong? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, I wish that.

MerlinMichael Scott makes one of those out of a piece of paper.

AlexYes.

MerlinHe tries it out. He models it and admires how it looks.

AlexHere's the thing. I loved those days because it could make me feel like, yes, look at everybody. I am girl. Yes, this is I am definitely girl. But also you could fidget with it all the time without looking like a weirdo. And it didn't cost $50 like this stupid Apple watch band that I love. but I'm definitely tearing apart accidentally.

MerlinWell, you fiddle with your band?

AlexI do, I do. Don't you fiddle? Aren't you a fiddler on a roof or otherwise?

MerlinI don't know. Tradition. I have gone all in on, I've tried many different bands, and I keep thinking bands will make me happy, but I'm all in on whatever the Velcro one is. I've got that. I have several of those that I like quite a lot.

AlexOh, wait, wait.

MerlinI don't know what they're called because they're all named the same thing, but I've got the band. I had the one that's like a dad band, you know, the Chaney-looking chainmail one. I've had that one. I've had the fake rubber ones, the elastomers or whatever they're called, the Reigns of Elastomere. I've had all of those. That's the official song of the Lannisters, and you don't want to hear it playing at your wedding.

Speaker AElastomeres.

MerlinYeah, Reigns of Castamere is actually a pun, turns out. suit um but but no because i just i love that i can just put it on with one hand because like what i love is that like what i love about it is also is like i have i have two watches that i wear and so i love the fact that when i get home part of my ritual is i switch from office watch to house watch and because i am like ignatius riley and have many layers if i'm trying to do it with one hand admittedly in the light i can take off the one off of my left wrist with my right hand

shouldn't put the cap for the milk in my left pocket and then i take that off and put it on the stand and then i put the new one on and here's what i can do i love this i just slap it randomly past where my hand is and then just velcro just a tiny bit so it stays on my wrist and then it's not in place it's not in place alex to get in place i'm gonna have to move some clothes i move my sleeve end up i get it where i want it to be still with one hand and i can velcro it right into place so i don't stim with watch what is your what is what makes you stim your watch i have

Alexthe what is it the solo braided solo loop because i accidentally that's the one where you tell it

Merlinwhat size it should be.

AlexCorrect, yes. And so I believe-

MerlinMine's the tiniest bit too big.

Speaker AThe tiniest bit too big.

AlexI felt very weird. I was like, oh, truly these are, like fuck you Apple, these truly are supposed to be for bigger men, the larger watch I mean, because the smallest band I can get is too big for my, it's a little- Do you have a 44? I don't know. Oh, that's the big nerdy one, right? What am I? Yes, I have a.

MerlinYeah, it used to be 40. I don't know. But you've got the big watch, right?

AlexYes, yes. Because I don't.

MerlinMe too.

AlexI don't.

MerlinMy wife's watch of many, many years ago, who might at this point be EOL, but my wife's, when I see it on the stand, I'm like, it's one of those things where I don't notice things except by comparison and with time. Like if you, if I can't just, I couldn't just eyeball a watch and go, oh, that's that one. But when I see my wife's, I'm like, oh, my God, the screen is so little.

AlexIt looks – I think the current smaller version of the watch looks better on pretty much everybody. But I don't care. And so I've got the big boy.

MerlinUntil it's a flatter version of the watch, though, it's not going to make a big difference.

AlexNo, no. I don't –

MerlinYou still look like one of those fake alpha males who likes wearing their big ones. Like I used to be a cop, guys.

AlexYes, like a tactical one.

MerlinLike we were the giant, giant watches.

AlexAnd isn't the, you know, rumors or shovel blocks, as you call them, are like, oh, Apple's going to have a rugged one.

MerlinA ruggedized watch. Yes, that's what they say. I am excited for the cop.

AlexThe cop watch.

MerlinCop watch for your cop wife.

So I figured out what news and topics Merlin figured out what makes Twitter bad. Last night, I figured out what makes Twitter bad. Full stop.

AlexWell, that will be in the after show. Are we really going to do it, right? We're really going to do it. No, we are really going to do it because I continue to be fascinated by Twitter because I've been on it since 2008 and I cannot let go of it, apparently. But, oh, oh, I'm at the wrong place. I'm at Try Bearable. That's not the correct doc.

MerlinOh, sorry. I sent a new answer. Yeah. Are we doing the challenge?

AlexI guess in the after show, we might also potentially. But do you hate the challenge? No, no. I hate that we have multiple docs because this is the only show that I have. Let's do it.

MerlinLet's. We've talked about this. Okay.

AlexOkay. Challenge. Oh, God. Yes. This is just. Oh, my God.

MerlinIt's totally unnecessary. Yeah.

AlexI made a friend of the show. Jay Miller helped me download because I did a catastrophic dumb thing with my I still have them, but they're not organized right. All of the show notes that we've ever in Markdown that we've ever put up. And he was kind enough to do some magic Python something or other.

MerlinDid you add in my corrections that I do?

AlexYes, it's good.

MerlinI wish that there we got to watch those Wikipedia links, Alex. I know you're on mobile. You're on mobile. I can tell you're on mobile and I can tell you didn't check that there was a parenthesis in the name. And you really got to watch that.

AlexI'm very. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know what? You know what?

MerlinYou should join the podcast version of Substack so you don't have to have an editor anymore.

AlexOh, this week's challenge. I don't know the right way that you've written it, which is the right way. Oh, scrolling, scrolling. oh no that's elon musk's body which i won't make fun of because that would be mean but holy fuck um i'm you know the only phrase i kept thinking is like i'm it's not like i'm i'm any less like this but he's so lumpy he's it's not that he's lumpy it's that he looks like he's from the mashed

potato kingdom oh god he looks like an adventure time character who is wrong It's like melting. Yeah, okay.

MerlinMaybe he's like a fifth-generation lemongrass. Somewhere between a McFoyle and a lemongrass.

AlexI mean, you do have to wait seven years for your Tesla. Maybe he's been in a dungeon. Who is to say?

MerlinNo trials. Digga, digga, digga, digga challenge. Hello, everyone, and thank you for bearing with whatever this is. Boy, I really – I never cut the back. I do. I try to cut the back.

AlexCut the back?

MerlinBut I still got some – I have my hair. I'm just looking at this photo. I'm going to close the tab.

AlexYou know what? Seriously, every time you feel self-conscious about yourself, and that's what I've been doing for the past two days, think you're hotter than the richest man currently alive. And it's just a nice feeling. It's probably a problematic feeling, but it's a nice feeling to have.

MerlinIt's quite a bar.

AlexI mean, I mean. You have better hair, for sure. I just keep thinking, man, if he can fuck crimes, you know, who's to say? What kind of crimes?

Crime.

MerlinOh, the person who sings.

AlexYes. Yes, indeed. Indeed. And they had two babies.

MerlinAnd they had the ADSF pound sign.

AlexYes.

MerlinExclamation point kid. Okay.

AlexYes. Well, at this point, I just.

Speaker AAlibaba products.

MerlinAlibaba? What?

AlexBoth of their names are like an Alibaba product. It's like Xeon XXR3.

MerlinOh, you're talking like one of those Amazon things that's just a bunch of letters.

AlexRight, right.

MerlinYeah.

AlexChallenge. Challenge. Oh, look at him here. Set a small intentionality. This was your challenge.

MerlinYeah, it was. And, you know, I want to get into this, but I... Oh, God. I did such a terrible thing today.

AlexOh, go on.

MerlinWell, basically, I wanted to credit you slash us because I had some little additions to the Wisdom Project.

AlexOh, seriously? Cool.

MerlinOh, no, that's okay. But I want to say last week. First of all, I did a grime of my own by really abusing the ID tag because I don't want H's in here. So look at that. If you click on that, I've done the unspeakable, Alex.

I've used HTML to create an ID for a break tag.

AlexOoh, ooh, ooh. This looks like it took a lot of work.

MerlinAnd according to somebody on Twitter, thank you honestly for the note, you're also not supposed to start IDs with a number, which is something I forgot. But I wanted a way to be able to send this link to you so you could jump down.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinOne, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight bullets I added last week. Remember that like babies and balls, you can bounce. That was just a thought I had. That's a night thought. But look at number two, buddy. Look at number two. Read number two.

AlexWait, what am I? Did I not go? Remember like balls? Okay. When the start time for a call or similar gets delayed, even for a theoretically specific time in just a few minutes, consider asking your colleague for a bumper. Text me when you're ready, but then give me 15 minutes. Then give me 15 minutes. Allows your brain to move fully out of waiting mode and into doing stuff mode. If the event ends up starting promptly at the new time,

which it won't, great. And if it doesn't start on time, which it won't, no problem. You will have disappeared into an appropriately sized task instead of being all mad about transitively wasted time that could have been more artfully redeployed. Damn.

MerlinAnd that's you.

AlexDamn.

MerlinWe invented the bumper last week.

AlexWe did. We did. Oh God, that's so much better than I'm not going to say it. I love this. This is very, very good. I am going to use this.

MerlinBut that's because of us, and I wanted to thank you for that. Now, the third one I think made Jason Snell mad because I was not criticizing Jason at all. And Jason, he's a friend. But I think he thought when I made fun of the fact that his washer dryer tells him what his most popular cycles are, I think he thought I was attacking him. But I was just attacking the idea of that sort of information that we may not need. And so that's where I adopted this considering whether to ingest a new source of information. You ask yourself, what might this make me want to see, think, or do differently?

And how might that be beneficial? Jump over four, which is the quick and easy writing trick. But four, the quick and easy writing trick, ends with, and this is called writing because you can build this up in reverse. I say weirdly when you're doing this writing exercise. Something will grab you and stimulate your juices, and you may find yourself writing for longer than three minutes. Next bullet. Start with related.

AlexRelated. Try to avoid saying that you're going to make yourself do something. Instead, take a breath and describe what you hope to find yourself doing. Inhabit your intentionality and quit trying to knock down a fully unlocked door. I oh shit dog oh reference acknowledged oh boy

Merlinbut that's been coming up on here right and then the reason I've been dragging you through all this is to get to the next one please read because I love when you read to me it's like a double donk ender please read relatedly related

Alexrelatedly related a goal can be a fine thing that describes a desired outcome defined by a positive change that you desire. On the other hand, think of an intentionality as the mindful way you'll choose to conduct and focus yourself on the way to a goal or pretty much anything else for that matter. I like this.

MerlinAnd that's us also.

AlexThat's us. That's us. Right?

MerlinIsn't that us?

AlexI think so. Or I hope that's us.

MerlinAnd then sometimes I just get mad And I say something like, before telling someone else how they are or what they should do, ask yourself how much these very important notes may actually be all about your shit and absolutely zero about theirs. Finally, give each of your houseplants a funny name and then use it. If you have one plant and have no ideas, you may choose to call your friend Planty. That's what I do.

Speaker AOh.

MerlinI brought you to this because I wanted to see my bad IDs. And I wanted to promote this non-project of mine and to say that's why we're talking about setting a small intentionality that you will find yourself inhabiting.

AlexWell.

MerlinAnd isn't that the challenge? Isn't it really the intentionality we made along the way?

AlexIt is. And this, oh boy, this week, my small intentionality was to just show up on, to actually, actually act as if something was 15, like I put everything in my calendar 15 minutes before it actually started.

MerlinVince Lombardi used to do that.

AlexYeah.

MerlinVince Lombardi used to set his watch 15 minutes fast. I mean, I don't know how he was necessarily a very learned man. He knew his watch was set forward 15 minutes, but he inhabited the fact that it's 15 minutes later than he is. I've heard it said, you know, one of my favorite quotes I've heard in the last year, there's no such thing as being on time. There's only being early and being late.

AlexYes, yes. And it has never worked for me in the past. Max had the same problem. Honestly, anybody I know who has usually ADHD.

MerlinI mean, you can have your own feelings about why Max, our friend from the program, should be canceled. But I think really it's his deliberate, willful lateness that should put him in the darkest duplette for all time.

can i have some food from alinea no you can't i'm late get back in the oubliettes i

Alexi i thought um you know what it doesn't matter whether or not i know that this doesn't actually start at a specific time it starts at a different time for me because we have all have different forms of consciousness.

MerlinHang on. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm actually crazy interested in this. Just a quick beat here. You're talking about just in general, like when you say there's a thing at a time, describe to me how you're – and we're really diving straight into this. I had a lot of other good material. Oh, I'm sorry.

Speaker ALet's do it.

MerlinNo, you should be. You do that. Yes, I do. So this week, you set a small intentionality, and your small intentionality was to do what?

AlexWell, I guess I peanut buttered in the sense that this was not small, but I decided.

MerlinOh, no. You exceeded the normal parameters of the challenge and failed.

AlexWell, I just.

MerlinAin't that America, baby? Ain't that America? I was too good.

AlexI was great. No, the idea was, listen, we are. You know what? I'm going to talk about this like it's Alex. Alex's world can be totally different than what is attached to reality.

MerlinBoy, I really hope every little bit of this is just a phase. This is not something I'm going to feel great about over the next five years. Because I know it'll get worse now that you've allowed yourself this sliver of light of inviting the Draculas of crazy into your bedchamber. And the way you're doing it right now is not wholesome.

AlexWait, how is that? listen it's not but we are all the main i'm not saying reject crazy i'm just saying don't just

Merlinjust don't order it in bulk

Alexno no no no no no i'm not denying that actual time exists i'm just

Merlinsaying for for this i didn't say that i'm talking about this this new character you're inhabiting of anybody but yourself

Alexi'm i'm i'm just you can occupy just like i'm just as god made me sir just like you can play a video game and read a book at the same maybe you're not doing both at the same time you can be reading a book and playing a video game you can make progress towards both so while i so so i am just existing in both versions of time i'm just focusing more on the book or in this case uh my

Merlinown time but in fairness in fairness that level of meta there's a level of metacognition which is a fancy way of saying like what separates us from the animals well we used to think it was tool use but then we discovered that like monkeys use sticks and stuff like that whatever but like meta the one thing that separates us is consciousness the fact that we're aware that we're thinking

Alexabout thinking which i think is not something that bando does good for him i impugn or

Merlinstamp a lot of thoughts on the bando most of my thoughts are that bando's thinking this

AlexYes. But that's the thing. If we really followed our lizard brains and we had like a literal lizard brains, it would be.

MerlinThere's still a little bit in there. I mean, there's a little almond on the side of your head that tells you a lot about how to be a safe lizard.

AlexOh, boy.

MerlinAmygdala is not just a river in Egypt. You know what I'm saying? and so you set yourself to the task of your intentionality springs out and i'm trying so hard to be helpful here your intentionality springs out of wanting to be punctual for things and so you need a model you need a way to infrastructure maybe to think about right

Alexand so or a trick yeah so really what i did was the bumper method except um in a way that people who aren't neurotypical would probably do it now that I'm thinking. You did a bumper on yourself kind of? I bumped myself. Yeah, because I was like.

MerlinWell, and like the honestly, though, like like jokes have left the room. That's not at all a crazy idea before we even get into the Daniel Kahneman stuff, which is real. But like there's the thing I first started. The way that I first referred to this that I'm aware of was in talking about Day Merlin and Night Merlin.

Speaker AOh?

MerlinWell, because there's the part of me that – and this shades into another thing that my friend Catherine used to call Notflix, which is you've ordered your three DVDs from Netflix. And here's an example of putting this all – Well, but this becomes important because with Netflix, you got a plan. I think there was the one DVD plan. There was the three DVD plan that almost everybody had. And then there was – you could get more. And they're based not too far down the road from here. So we might get DVDs like the next day.

But here's the thing. Daymerlin. And I'm going to just say this phonetically the way I would have said it in 2004. Daymerlin is looking at the Netflix site and goes, you know what? I can't remember the last time I watched. Well, maybe like a true faux film or something. Like I'm always wanting to get back in a new wave. It didn't really take until the Criterion Channel came along. But anyway, you go like Daymerle and goes, hmm. I look through my Ponce Nez and I say, perhaps I should acquire the movie Weekend.

Or I should get, you know, Boonewell's Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which I hated the first time I saw it. But, you know, I'm alerted, man. Maybe I should see that again. Or maybe I should get disc three of like some giant fucking D.W. Griffith thing or whatever. And then they arrive and I open them up. I'm excited. I open it up. oh because you know now it's nighttime it's time for nightmare on the take over and he opens up the dvd and he goes um i don't the condition that exists to this day alex i need subtitles because

i can't hear very well but i don't want to have to read subtitles i mean i've got so many tar i can't tell you how many times i've almost watched mirror by tarkovsky because i know i'm gonna love it. I know all the great Tarkovskys. I know I want to see all of them, not least because they crop up so often in YouTube videos of interesting movies. I mean, I've watched Mirror. I've watched Mirror. I've fallen asleep in Mirror. But any of those kinds of things, I just don't want to have to read subtitles.

Do you know what I mean? Oh, absolutely. To really get this. If I'm going to watch the Balthazar the Donkey movie or I'm going to read the one about the French Resistance in

Alexyears like any of those good movies oh absolutely i did the same thing do you get this thing day

Merlinday day day they gets this really ambitious thing without really thinking about how night

Alexthem are that's how my instapaper cue still is i want to i want a running count of how many times

Merlini've been in instapaper and then try to add the article to instapaper oh god that feels important You've done that, right?

AlexOh, absolutely. Honestly, I really like Matter, this new app, which I will put in show notes because it's kind of like it has the feature that was beloved by Mailbox RIP. You can, if you're reading a story, you can just easily select go to like swipe and go to top so that it goes to the top of your queue. Or you can sort by link. So if your brain is mush at the end of the day, like mine is, I can be like, all right, I just want the little short.

MerlinI will. Please do put that in. I will definitely check that.

AlexYeah, it's really it's really good.

MerlinBut that's OK. So like, I mean, we can have fun with this whole dissociative sort of idea or whatever. But like it's a real thing. And I think that you can extend it so many ways. In terms of like whenever I find myself falling back into talking about – when we talk about desire for change, of course, problematically, we end up talking about I don't like the way my body feels. I don't feel healthy. I don't have energy. I should probably be eating and exercising and doing almost everything differently. And I may also have something for you in the after show about a new model I'm working on.

But like infrastructure is necessary for almost everything. Sometimes infrastructure means Vince Lombardi setting his watch forward because you need to trick dumb you into – sometimes you – I don't want to make this like qualitative. I'm not saying dumb is bad. But like the you that has –

Speaker AI hope not because –

MerlinWell, because like – but think about though like what – are you going to despise yourself because it's nighttime and you don't feel like starting a big project? Well, no. I mean your energy changes through the days. Be a fucking adult. Like realize different energy and interest focus for me. Like I say, afternoons, my ADD afternoons are sometimes pretty shitty. But like there is this way of saying like, well, OK, if I want to not eat junk food, I need to stop buying junk food. Forgive me for always using that example, except at least half of you are living that literally today.

We're like there's something you said you didn't want to do and now you're doing it. There's a million ways to treat this. You could do the thing. I'm going to shut off my router so I can write my book. Like, yeah, there's nothing else to do on your computer when your router is off. But whatever. You can do this. You can do all of those things. All of those are what I would incorrectly call compensatory muscles. You're trying to, like, if you injure your back. I had a friend who injured his back and was trying to avoid the inevitable disc surgery he would need. But he had success for a long time by doing these incredibly specific and difficult exercises.

that is the way I understood it, he's basically making like a little man corset that like would the compensatory muscles that will help give you extra support in this area because the ones that shipped with your body aren't working anymore.

Speaker AOh, shit.

MerlinYou see this in all kinds of rehab, right? But compensatory muscles, the idea, or the downside, the opposite of a compensatory muscle for me, if I injure my knee or my ankle or my whatever, well, pretty soon I'm limping. That limp affects my gait. That gait throws me off and it doesn't take a professional chiropractor to say like what started as a little bit of ankle pain now has consequences beyond that. Kind of, right? And so I had discompensatory muscles where they're trying to be helpful but instead just created new problems. and like this there's is a part of us the good part of us the are better angels that says like

i need to not just have a good idea when i'm day me but i need to have an implementation strategy and infrastructure that makes the right thing the easy thing for night me maybe that doesn't always mean watching a movie but you do have to have to wrap it back around you have to have a

Alexlevel of metacognition don't you think no seriously yeah and that is what i've tried to do for years and years but what i've kind of come to realize is that i know that i can't actually as much as i would love to i can't actually trick myself into like being like yeah i uh will do this now because i know that i won't do this later like i i do it but it doesn't make me happy whereas it i've accepted the mindset of

you know what I am doing this now because I know that a future me is going to just want to watch The Simpsons for two hours unless I have

MerlinI'm going to make a hole in the schedule to do that thing but then doesn't that sometimes make you mad like or not mad but like doesn't it sometimes then don't you feel like you've disappointed they you

Alexabsolutely but now I'm like okay if you can't be nice to your future self Just pretend it is someone you love. Would you shame or be upset if someone you love did this? Because I'm disassociative Dan. Yeah.

MerlinShouldn't you be more anxious right now? I mean, that's what you're saying. You're basically saying, shouldn't you be more anxious?

AlexYeah, Merlin, are you relaxing? Are you taking care of yourself, you monster?

MerlinWell, can I problematize that even further? is that I think in some puritanical American version of our brain, I think, you know, you can tell by the way that I'm trying to parse this and be careful about how I say it. I don't mean to be saying that day you, well, let's just go pre-Hegelian. We're going to have these two parts. We're going to do a bi-partite chart, which is going to be there's day you and night you. Day you is good you. Night you is bad you. Day you is smart you.

Night you is dumb you, right? And I think there is something very real to that little weird binary or dyad, which is like we feel like the day us who wants to watch Truffaut and, you know, write 7000 pages today. What do we do? Well, we say that is that that's the lawful good paladin version of us who. And then we get so disappointed that the chaotic neutral thief that we have at night is so bad compared to the good me.

Well, let me say this. I'm not saying – I'm saying that like just because Dayu is a paladin doesn't mean he's always good or lawful. Sometimes he's a piece of shit who just had too much coffee or too much Ritalin or whatever. And that paladin is getting – to mix the metaphors, getting way over his skis about what to expect of somebody who is actually himself. So it's not just – I don't think we should just heap blame onto the torpid and disappointing us of the night, so to speak.

But I think we also need to be more practical about the day version of us. And this is an analogy except it's not. We need to be more sensible and realistic and understand that those two halves do equal a whole. and that hole with a w needs to have integrity even as it expresses itself in little spikes throughout the day the night the good the bad and the whatever and a lot of that you just fucking nailed it dude a lot of it does come down to like like is it is it helping you to be so terrible to

yourself because i bet it's really not if you were being terribly terrible to yourself and it worked

Alexyou wouldn't need to do it anymore yeah you would be watching rashomon right now you'd be done it's

Merlinlike a resolution you quit smoking and now bob's your uncle you know you've finished infinite just

Alexyou're picking up go to lesher block everything's coming up millhouse an eternal braid my roommate

Merlinwrote his thesis about that book um and so you set out to do that and how would you I sent you something and I don't imagine that you looked at it but I I did?

AlexOh, explain what you said to me.

MerlinYou're misunderstanding what it is I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is there's two big parts to this challenge and I'm coming back to you in a second but there's two big parts to this challenge that have been so interesting to me. One, I'm sorry guys, I'm going to beat this to death, the find yourself thing. See, you didn't like my analogy last week, the thing from Irma Vep and then I posted those screen grabs last night to clarify what the person says in the scene boy you should really be watching this show but there's there's a point there's a point in the in the recap that i was able to screen grab and so oh gosh her cute lesbian assistant who's actually

a really good director um so she says so you mean that i have to be irma vep and then her friend says no you have to let irma vep be you and you scoffed at that a little bit because it is very

Alexbananas sounding. Well, that's why I pulled in Alex because I'm like, you know what? I really listened to the episode. I'm like, actually, that seems pretty on brand. Well, because but it's

Merlinreally difficult. It's almost I want to say almost ineffable. And ineffable is one of those words that people use when they think that they're smart and they can fool people into thinking that their lack of articulation is intelligence. And yet what I will say here is finding yourself doing something, especially with intentions is a pretty fucking killer move rather than, and I'm not saying this has to be the opposite, but when we say I'm going to make myself lose weight or I'm going to make myself be healthy, I'm going to make myself, you're dishonoring the wholeness of yourself in some ways.

And in the same way as Irma Vep, you know, trying to let Irma Vep, you know, become her, when you real, whether you're realizing an intentionality or realizing a way that you'd like to be, I, that sounds so subtle, But I think that making it less negative and making it more about openness, openness and listening is so much more beneficial. Right. You're not you're not creating another one of these little unnecessary races with yourself.

AlexDo you know what I mean? Yeah. You're already racing so many people. Just I don't know. I. So how would you phrase it?

MerlinWhat is it? What is your if you can say if you want? Like, how did you as you went into this in your prayerful, mindful way? Do you remember how you worded it in your head?

AlexNo, I truly didn't. I think it was just a I more of a way to give myself grace in that. I just kept reminding myself.

MerlinOh, great word. Such a great word.

AlexLike how would I react if Merlin would do it specifically in this case? Like what? I'd like a WWMD and that.

MerlinWWMD.

AlexWait. Oh, you're making a bracelet. I get it. See, I really want a rubber bracelet. But that like last night.

MerlinFluorolastomer. The reins of fluorostomer.

AlexI spent a lot of time watching TV last night and I stayed up far too late. And I'm like, what's the use of being angry at myself? Why don't I like ask yourself, is this helping?

MerlinYeah, that takes metacognition. It takes metacognition to even have the temerity to go, hey, you know what? I think I'm really fucking mad at myself right now. And how's that working out? Sometimes you do just need to stop and go like somebody mentioned this recently on a podcast. like, oh, he's in the flop house. The anxiety exercise of like enumerating things that are in the room that you're in, something that, you know, there's various ways that you could try to be more, you know, feel more alive and located in the space that you're in, just being a they in a room.

But don't you think though that metacognition, but that does not come naturally, especially if you've got, I don't want to say the wrong thing, neural pathways. Like if you've basically beaten the Conestoga wagon tracks of negativity, like if you've spent your entire life defaulting to a negative reaction to how you are, that's not something that you're going to quit doing in an afternoon.

AlexYeah.

MerlinIt's like napping. It takes practice.

AlexAnd it's not a – like I feel like this sounds a little self-helpy, but it's really not because I wish that there was a big dumb book about this. Like I don't know. like I

Merlinour new book Ears to Hear impossibly subtle things that you're going to think are stupid and gay but will actually help you in there can I do mine real quick and then we'll bounce

Alexplease do please do

Merlinand there my two things I have to say about this are quite contrasting in some ways. And the part of this that I think is really meaningful, God, I can't get away with this, the finding yourself having an attentionality. And I'll get to that one in a second. But the more left brain version of this is something I sent to you where, and I'm not saying either one is good or bad, but they do different things. I made, this will be somewhat, something like this would be familiar to somebody who's done cognitive

behavioral therapy, when you're asked to keep a log about, you know, when you felt an emotion, what caused it, trying to make that connection, right? And so I made this really dumb little document that I think is actually really helpful. So for a minute, we're setting aside finding yourself doing something. And this is a little closer to not making yourself do something, but it is a little bit closer to, okay, I'm officially going to intend to do something, which when you put it that way makes it sound more like a goal but yeah or something of something to

resolve which i think is not all that's why i said in the thing which can be a fine thing but i think first of all people we talked about this last week people don't know what they want they don't know what success looks like they don't know what they want to achieve and but they again they just spend their whole life running around trying to knock down a non-existent door which is really frustrating And so where's my log? I had a log. I put it here. So what I was saying was I made this four column table in Markdown.

And so I called this my intentionality log. And it's really more like an intentionality plan, if I'm being honest. And the four columns are when I do a thing. My intentionality is to, and then that. And not to, here's another thing. And then so I will. Okay? So, and I say, again, I'm pushing a rope a little bit here. When I take a bike ride, my intentionality is to go slow and focus on how it feels.

And not get distracted by zooming around and trying to go fast. And so I will continually remind myself to incline myself toward, you know, something like that. One example I gave you, when I take a walk, my intentionality is to look for the chimneys and not to get distracted by my bummer thoughts. And so I will gently incline myself back to the chimneys. I thought this was kind of cool and interesting and a good exercise if this all sounds like an interesting but somewhat foreign idea to kind of establish what an intentionality is.

My goal is not to beat my record with the Golden Gate Bison Loop. My goal, in this case, I've had a knee injury for longer than I would like. And I took my first ride in a while. and I very much knew that my first intentionality, well, if I'm being honest, is to not fall off the bike or get hit by a car. But my intentionality was to just take it easy and like remember how it feels, how fun it is, but also just how it feels to be on a bike.

AlexSo it seems like it worked quite a bit.

MerlinOh, no, that absolutely worked. But now here's where it gets good. And then we're almost done. The finding myself, which is different from this, because here's the thing. That is a front-loaded idea of the intentionality that I'm going to load into this, you know, like a torpedo on a submarine. I'm going to, like, stage this, stodge this, put this into my big torpedo gun for my submarine, and then I'm going to shoot it. But you know the one that I love? And I almost felt like I peanut buttered because I did this one so much more often is the finding myself with an intentionality.

Now, what the fuck does that mean? Alex, what if I'm already doing something?

AlexMm-hmm. Oh, fuck.

MerlinAnd I find myself having an intentionality. I mean, instead of, again, trying to knock down a door in this other model of like, I need to have intentionalities and do them. What if instead I hop on my bike and I start moving? And I told you this one before. I think this is one of the ways it started was like, I just realized I found myself having an intentionality to get really good at avoiding road hazards. It's not about time. It's not about relaxation. It's not about any of those things. So you could say my goal is to have a bike ride where I didn't hit a pothole.

AlexYeah, your attention was staying alive.

MerlinThat's true. But that's not what it was. What it was was realizing, finding myself – God, that's such a good phrase. Finding myself thinking, hmm, this is a good ride. I think I'm going to spend this one doing this thing.

Speaker AHmm.

MerlinNow, the problem is, though, sometimes you have goals. You need goals. Maybe one of my goals is I need to go pick up a prescription. or my goal is I need to go to the ATM. I will know this project is done when I have gotten money from the ATM and it didn't tell me I'm out of money, implicitly. That's always a good goal of the ATM is to not feel like I'm out of money,

that I will not achieve my utter dissolution at some point during this bike ride. Think about that, though. It sounds like this is interesting to you, so I would just say start thinking about the – not focusing on, but being aware of the find yourself part. um i i i i'll go into this more next time probably but um my family's out of town i'm at the house alone and i realized i don't know if this is a goal or an intentionality but i realized before they even left that i was going to use this time to to do a a super power putter but with focused

direction and like you know there's just my my wife finally realized and said to me in a way i I really appreciate. There's some stuff you just can't do when we're here. And I'm like, thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate you noticing that. It's not just seasoning the pans. It's not just like, you know, shades into stuff like I've wanted for months to completely start over with the Roomba map of the house. Now, you will all each and all be forgiven for going, why are you saying those words?

Who cares? Well, first of all, it matters to me. I want to be able to give the Roomba a schedule, tell it what to do. But, you know, sometimes it just never understood that there was a door there. And I've just lived with that. And that's fine. But then the downside, I can't do that. Like when we're sitting around at night, the rumbling of the giant Roomba going all over the place over and over. And then what do you do, Alex? You run that same one again. Now, learn kitchen, learn kitchen, learn kitchen. Put in new area.

I can't do that when they're there in a way that won't make sense until they're mad. And they go, why is it so loud? Can you do this later? And I do do it later, which is when they're not around. The other one is I have wanted to, as part of the ongoing Omnibus project, the cleaning of the house project, I wanted to go deeper than I've ever gone before into areas that are dead in the house. Some old cabinets. I mean, like our linen closet is practically just a pile of Band-Aids.

There's no sense to it at all. It's basically maxi pads, Band-Aids, and lights that fell down. That's – no, no, no. But like, I mean, I can't control that. I need maxi pads. I'm not mad.

And so I've had that approach. I found this extremely useful in this weird little project. Yeah. Okay, so when I, so this is a bit from a Tenacious D song, but we have this area in our house called the side hatch, which is like the little, very narrow corridor between our kitchen and the back door, right? Importantly, it's the secondary means of aggress in the case of any need to leave the house. It's very narrow. So what do we got?

In the front, we got the kill zone. And in the back, we got the side hatch. And they're both super narrow compared to what I would like. Both have doors that open in. And as we learned at the Who concert in 1979, that's not always a great idea. They both have to stay tidy, but they both have very functional uses. And there are cabinets in the side hatch that I just have not touched. There's a shelf in the side hatch. It's just nasty old liquor bottles covered with like meat cooking scunge. Like it's all just, you know how it gets gross like in an area like that?

And even the shelves in there that are like two years old, like really are in need of a refactor. And so I said to myself, I says, when I clean out the side hatch, my intentionality is to reimagine how to use the area and not just shuffle shit around. So I will strip everything down and start over. So out of that, I got something like a goal or like an outcome. But the intentionality, why would you bother with that, Merlin?

Why are you writing a markdown table about cleaning an area?

AlexI thought you liked OmniFocus. Humney focus.

MerlinI thought I liked the humney focus, but I need infrastructure there to derive how I know when I'm not doing the thing I think that I'm doing. So if I'm mainly moving things off of shelves and putting them into nicer boxes, no. And that's where we may get into this in the after show is my new three-part model for cleaning an area.

AlexOh.

MerlinYou make a hole. You build in. You make a hole. First, make a hole. Number two, introduce or add infrastructure. Step three, introduce quality.

AlexOh. Oh.

MerlinSo what that means is there's so many levels to first make a hole as stipulated here and more often on Rectifs. But like if you've ever tried to clean out the house of a hoarder, you know that problem zero is there's no room to do anything. You have nowhere to put your keys or your backpack, let alone a 55-gallon like husky garbage can. You have to first make a hole. Some of that stuff, it's a tile puzzle, right?

You cannot have a tile puzzle. Let's put it this way. A tile puzzle with 16 tiles is not going to be nearly as fine as one with 15.

AlexNo.

MerlinSo you first make a hole. but there's still more holes to be made. You need to make room for the garbage that's there to go out. Then you need to make room for that garbage can. Then you need to make room for the garbage that you're going to be taking out out of the garbage can. There's all kinds of holes. One of the holes I had to make is re-see all of the shit in this cabinet nobody's touched in 10 years. All of these, I said this is Syracuse last night. I don't know how we have so many different things for floors. Like we have floor waxes and we have five kinds of Swiffers and we have all of this stuff. And that first second when I find myself thinking I should organize all the Swiffers, that's where the intentionality helps.

It kicks in and it goes, hey, bud, remember, if you haven't used those in years and if you're really being honest with yourself in a way you couldn't say on a podcast, you can always buy all of this shit again. But first you need to strip it down to the fucking rafters and studs. And that intentionality is what's kept me honest about that. And I'm getting mini plaudits from my family for what I've been able to do by reclaiming cubic feet of areas in our house that we've just gone dead to. It might as well have been filled with chicken feathers and concrete and be totally unusable for how much we use it.

And when my first impulse is to organize the bullshit in there we haven't needed in 10 years, the intentionality kicks in and says, no, remember, remember, you're going to reimagine how to use the area. and not just shuffle shit around.

AlexYou've got to dig deep. To strip everything down.

MerlinDig deep. Mm-hmm. I love this stuff. I'm so high on my own supply at this point.

AlexNo, you're a regular, what's his name? Stanley Yelnance right now with all your holes.

MerlinYelnance?

AlexStanley Yelnance, the main character of holes? No? You have a child. How do you not know holes?

MerlinHoles. Holes? I know the point. I know with the songs by the guy who did the song from Russian Doll, I know the point. Me and my arrow. Tell me what Holes is. Holes is a Disney movie. I bet it's a Disney movie.

AlexWell, I mean, it's adapted from a young adult novel, but yes, it is a Disney movie.

MerlinOh, is that where the kids are Transformers and turn into lizards in a parking lot?

AlexWhat?

MerlinWe had a challenge about that here.

AlexWhat? Oh, Animorphs?

Merlinyeah right is it like that

Alexno no it starts Shia LaBeouf and they dig holes for water yeah yeah

Merlinholes huh Andy Warhol

Alexgod you need to ask your kid about this

MerlinI don't need to ask my kid about shit

Alexokay alright

Merlinmy kid's going to see Beetlejuice today what can I say I bet it's what tickets were available I bet my kid if my kid got to shows would want to see like the one you immediately mentioned six or I don't even know what's on Broadway right now.

AlexI know Company closed. Aladdin. Lion King. I don't know.

MerlinPhone rings, door chimes, out left, Company. Someone to cancel my show!

Show notes

Transcript

296. Lesbian Emeritus

Show notes

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