332. My Little Giblets

This is Do by Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann. This week's challenge just do the thing hello hello good afternoon merlin man hi alex Uh how are you? I'm I'm alright. Is this the show? Are we gonna do the show? Yep. I um so unfortunately Sorry, yes. I don't love that bit. I just need to put a stake in the ground about it. It's it's funny if you need that for the show, but it's Yeah. I I I could choose to exact my revenge if you continue doing that. And I just wanna put you on notice about that. I made it very clear to you that I don't like when you do it. I don't think it's a funny bit. So if you decided that it's a bit you're gonna keep doing Uh consider this I've served you a warning.

The warning has been served. Okay. I have been warned. You done opening drinks now? I'm done opening drinks now. So unfortunately, I cannot get ChatGPT yet to give me um racist names for a fake TV series. But that has not stopped me from continuing with the thread, may I? I'm sorry to hear that. Go on. So I'd said what's a terrible name for a TV show that's made for the very stupid And it gave me one. I said, excellent. Now give me one with an upsetting racial slur. And it said, I'm sorry I can't provide that, right? And then I said, so can real quick, can I just have a second for this and we'll do the challenge? Yes, yes. Go ahead. I said, okay, then how about some fake names for ABC Friday night TV shows in the 90s that contain really bad puns about family and parenthood?

Because I want to say, okay, fine. I don't want to put you on blast. Get back in your comfort zone. And so here's some of the it said here so here are a few fictional Light-hearted TV show names with puns related to family and parenthood. Diaper Days, Colin. The Tangled Tales of Parenthood. Home run, Colin. These really sound like the more like the names of a new college thesis, but home run, Colonel Juggling Jobs, Kids, and Curveballs. Sibling silliness, the hilarious, it goes on like this. And I said, very good, now go darker. Oh. And I think it initially misunderstood me that I just wanted to have like Barnabas Collins like chain rattle chain rattle names. I said so then I thought, okay, well no.

Remember, remember what we're doing here. XY problem. What is it I really want? And so I said, okay, then how about some fake names for ABC Friday Night TV shows in the 90s that contain really bad puns about family and parenthood, uh, make them pun puns, but darkly strange and Bar tone. And uh dys dysfunction with fun in all caps. Dysfunction Junction, offbeat Tales of Family Chaos. Crib notes the sinister side of bedtime stories. See, I this already feels a little bit RL Stein. But then I thought, okay, don't hold back. I said, okay, then how about some fake names for ABC, Friday night t comedy TV shows in the nineties that contain really bad puns about death. Um dude, am I remembering this right?

This is things you got your family matters. You got your um um a broken house. Or whatever it's called, where all the dad the the dads live in San Francisco. The Al the Alamo uh Al Alamo Square Pegs or whatever. That's pretty good. I should use that. That that was that was good. No, that one happened in near uh part of the woods, I believe. That's actually near where the little lord uh went to middle school. Like like two blocks away. Here are let's see, and so it said I said that. Give me some puns about death, okay? Ready? Can I give you a few? I I don't hate this, all right? Grim reaping the benefits, Colin, life after life insurance. Casket case. The hilarious of the funeral home. Dead man's party.

Ghosts just want to have fun. Mortuary Mirth, Finding Laughter in the Afterlife. And Tombstone Tickles, the comedy Crypt Chronicles. Tombstone Tickles Tombstone Tickles, the comedy Crypt Chronicles, but they did it with C's. I think it'd be funnier if they did it with K's. The bang bang machine is back, but I think it's gonna be very, very brief. You might have heard me shrieking right as you hung up the call on me, and that's because the bang bang machine started literally the second you hung up on our call. Oh no. But I think we'll be okay. I'm kind of sad that I missed it. I have a uh or rather I I don't yet, but I've started creating uh a uh s sort of a collection of inconvenient noises of various co-hosts.

That's that's that new Lemony Snicket series, isn't it? What's it called? A series of unfortunate sounds But then it it makes it easy to do. Now you know what the comedy Crypt Chronicles would work for that. Yes. And and Alex, you've worked in graphic design. What do you call it when you have a collection of things like clips? you know, clip art, reusable elements, photos, what do you call it? You call it the mall. Oh bravo. Huh. Morg Morgon Morgallons. Morg the Morgall The Morgulons. Morgallons. I don't know if that's pronounced right, but it's a fan it's like the Adams family, except everybody thinks they have fibers come growing out of their skin like fiberglass. Ooh, ooh. This week's special guest, Joni Mitchell.

Eww, ew, ew, ew. Help me! I think I've got fibers growing from my skin. Notice that unlike the before show, I I'm not saying no, I'm just saying ew, because ew. Ew, ew, ooh. I should learn the rest of that riff. Okay, I've discovered that I accidentally figured out how easy it is to play a little bit from the nutcracker. And I think I might have found the harmonica version of Smoke on the Water. Where like anybody like okay, so like you get a guitar and like if you're my age You've grown up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, I think the joke on Better Call Saul is they don't have the rights to the song, so he can never play Smoke on the Water, right? But like something like that Right? The the last two got very soft, but but yes.

Oh wait, it might be my thing here. Let's see. I don't have a pick. God damn it. Okay, job one F find a fuck okay, I'm gonna I have a a small a small rock here that I will use. Let's see. Oh my goodness. Let's see. I'm bending the neck a little there. Smokey harm. And did you d discover that just by sucking and blowing? That and Iron Man are kind of the same thing, right? Yeah. Let's see. Could imagine I'm playing literally with a rock? I know. I mean The air the when when you're playing with your AirPods, it was incredibly impressive. And I still don't know if I believe I it it was like a magic act. Can't wait to see what you do with it. That's really good what you're doing. That's really Why do you have a rock in your office?

Oh I have lots of rocks in my office. I collect I'm not gonna we can save this episode. I do want to find a pick because I love playing guitar. I got some edibles. Oh I've already started editing the before show. Uh it's gonna it's gonna be fun. Um I'll work on finding that. Oh, okay. So I want to just clarify, I want to bring everybody up to date. Um the greatest uh most hilarious and most appropriate slam from my family, as we all know, when we went out for dinner. for my wife's birthday, I sa I was making remarks about the restaurant and how I thought everything seemed kind of wrong and off there. And they're like, and and they remember, the real heads will remember, my wife said to me, You never leave the house.

You think everything is weird. And my kid, it wasn't even funny. The kid just nodded like, yeah, this is known. Right? Like that's that's how you are. Um a week or so ago, I just want to cli I really do just want to make sure my kid gets credit for this. Also hi Ava if you're listening. Um and so Alice wants to groom you. No. No, no, no, no, like a monkey, like picking off the fleas. Did you read about Rhonda Santis's friend in Florida? Uh no but I Oh my god I have something so good to tell you about I'm very excited. But you're so right about him. Oh I'll save it for the show. Oh me, I Yes. Didn't I kinda nail it? Wet bag of laundry. Absolutely. Oh no, he's he's very appealing to a broad set.

Felix had a funny bit yesterday, he's like, Oh no, this is still this is still DeSantis's to lose. As long as he never ever talks to anybody or is exposed in any way, like it's a lock. He's gonna win. The guy's amazing as no one as long as no one ever sees him or hears him speak. They think they like him. He's like cilantro. Oh they want to go Go on. Your kid, give your kid credit. I just wanted I gave that credit to my to my my wifi and I just wanted to say that was very funny. My my kid and I were walking around like we do our little walks. I think it was you know what it was we were walking to go see uh the m the the Mario movie So we walk to the mall, which is about a mile from our house, and uh we're walking.

And like we're not more than a couple blocks from the house and and I'm doing I'm how I am. Which I'll I can explain more in a minute. Well, I'll do things like I'll say, oh, hey, check that out. Huh, that's interesting. It looks like they got a different uh security light out here. Huh? Look at that. Oh, wow, check that out. Looks like they left some books outside, free books. Oh wow, oh my god, that looks like a pretty good box. And my in exasperation my 15-year-old teen said to me, Walking with you is like walking with a distracted dog. You you have to stop and sniff everything. And you know what I said? I said that'll do, pig. That's very, very good and it's very very true. Hey, hey, what about uh did I pee on that yet?

Is that my pee? That's somebody else's pee. I'm such a dog. I'm such a dog. It's it's it nails me so like you could be like, oh, I took a personality test and it says I'm a fucking dog. Like, I'm so a dog. I'm a dog in every fucking way. I'm so sweaty. I'm basically like a I'm like a Dalmatian with a badge. You are not as No, no, no. I'm so fucking stupid, but I do have a bachelor's degree. What's over there? Is there more street? This is the place. What's a push? Is that a new push? It wasn't there before. I just shit myself and go to sleep. No, no, no. Dalmatian Dalmatian life. I should get a gang sign for that. The gang sign is my tail sweeping everything off of the coffee table because I'm so fucking stupid.

And inbred. We're gonna go for a walk. What? We're going to the park? Well we're gonna walk through the park because we're going to the stonestown. We're going to the mall. Oh go through the park. Yes, yes, we have to walk through Cern Grove to get to where the Regal Theater is. Start going to the park? Huh? Hey, I used to know someone who lived down here. What? Oh, I haven't checked their mail in a while. Huh. What I This is what it's like to be with me. I mean uh this Saturday, Matchie, my my uh spouse, uh the the real heads will remember, Matchie has said the exact same thing about me, but at least With the addendum, I or well, he says, okay, you need to not be in puppy mode right now. Oh, that's so sweet.

That's even sweeter. I love that. And he he went on to to say, no, right now you're like uh being a labradoodle. Like I understand labradoodle technically you are smart Yes. But the labrador part's just winning out. That turns into old yeller and everyone's sad. It was seventy degrees in Chicago. How could I not s sniff everybody's butts. Like oh that's pretty that's pretty pretty good. I know, I know. Had some caffeine on our break our break. Because we're having a slightly anarchic episode This is normally something I would save for our man of the week. Alex, would you please share with our listeners a copyrighted segment of the Do by Friday program? about our our patented uh copyrighted trademark man of the week segment that we do.

Tell people about that. You can go to give us your fucking money dot com or do by Friday. Patreon. com slash do by Friday and you can give us money and it helps us with the living things in our life. And we need the money. But what's that what is that copyrighted feature of the Do by Friday program that we call man of the week? I I think it's trade trademarked but but alright. Well, it's it's somebody though who's really exc shown themselves a really excelled a man who's or usually it is a man who's usually excelled with something involving his dick. Is it fair to say kinda? I I would say that it is a rather open category. It's about it's usually about masturbation. Usually it's about masturbation.

Uh you usually doodler though. The doodler kind of counts as a man of the week. He was just ignorant by the track. Which sounds like a line from like an old John Cougar song. I would say by the track. It it's Sort of about a marginalized community known as the men who just need to masturbate or defecate in public areas. For whatever reason. We've stipulated that it should be like a medical marijuana card where you just say to the young woman on the plane, the woman's sitting next next seat to you, she's got headphones on. She's enjoying a book and her body language is very clearly saying, I don't want to talk to anybody, but I especially don't want to talk to you. You hand her the card. Yes. And you say, excuse me, miss, I'm gonna be jacking my mean bone once you go to sleep.

Or earlier. And it'll take me a long time. I won't be able to finish, but it doesn't mean I won't try. Because my daddy taught me stick tuitiveness. Yes. Yes. Jordan B. Peterson. Yes, he be. And you usually find these um men of the week. Sometimes they pop into my area of the internet, but you know, you're more tuned in. You're on the ground floor of all the diddles. Do you have a man of the week? I do, and like I I don't wanna seem like I'm making light of see this is the kind of Sexual assaults. Oh, we're gonna traumatize people by mentioning that someone's a shit. Um this is reporting from yesterday via uh hello hello the daily mail dot com. uk This is gonna be a good one. Uh for I I'm gonna say a name in a minute.

And it's gonna sound like a name that that Felix invented because it sounds like such a good like Felix name. But I'm gonna be telling you the tale. of a fella named Kent Sturman. Kent Sturman. All right. Exclusive Colin. Prominent DeSantis ally who shot himself dead last year. was under investigation for using sold-out Taylor Swift tickets to lure teens to his office to show him her breasts, and then trying to buy family silence. Please read that again. Exclusive. Exclusive. Exclusive Dereels Deals. There's so many deals on Mac Rivers right now. Do you know this is the lowest price for this Amazon Amazon Z um um iPod uh uh knockoff? It's the lowest price we've ever seen. Uh uh you y you make fun of it, but now I'm going to Macroom Tell tell me about the exclusive again.

Exclusive! Because my brain did not have scoops Scoop, scoop. Prominent. DeSantis. Prominent. Because you know this is the UK and apparently they're they're allowed to have longer headlines where you use things like articles. That clarify what the fuck you're talking about. Whereas in the US we we say things that make it sound like we've had a little stroke lit and are determined to push through it and post. Prominent DeSantis ally. who shot himself dead last year, was under investigation for using sold out Taylor Swift tickets to lure Teen to his office and show him her bre not a great headline, show him her breast dash, then trying to buy family silence. Oh wow. Huh. He's really uh yeah. We're talking here about a felony Kent Sturman.

Kent Sturman drong. Um that's funny if you still have to be a little bit more. Already I have to say he is really kind of uh uh appropriating the the the groomer. Oh if you look at this guy, you would see this guy and you would go like never an image. This guy can't that Kent Stirman? This guy? He doesn't look like a sex man at all. Him? The political donor behind Ron DeSantis's It's you really need to understand this guy's been this is guy uh like old school DeSantis guy. DeSantis would not be on the map today if it weren't for uh people like Kent Starman. Political donor behind you know I won't read you the whole thing. Here's here's the and of course now also because it's the UK, they have the decency to give you three big fucking bullets that explain what's in the article.

They're not scared that you're like won't read the article. So, you know, it blah blah blah blah. Okay, bullet one. Kent Sturman, fifty, of Jacksonville, was facing allegations of sexual misconduct involving a minor girl after her family refused his quote five-figure unquote hush money deal. Two. Law enforcement sources told DailyMail. com the influential GOP donor lured the teen to his office with Taylor Swift concert tickets and asked to see her breasts. The girl told her family, who furiously confronted Sturman and reported him to the cops, who began investigating the claims at the time of his death on December 8th. What? So the there's there's there's so much to love about this and the the I'll just give you the quick one-two punch.

I'm not uh there's a there was uh a gal, you know, an underage gal, and I don't know uh He he's gonna get her Taylor Swift tickets but says you have to send me a photo of your breast to the thirteen-year-old girl. I think she was thirteen. She's she was she was pretty young. She was definitely underage, but He uh he said, Yeah, you gotta send me a picture of your of your new bile breasts and I will give you Taylor Swift concert tickets, which are a big deal because they're very hard to get. And then that turned into this thing of like, oh yeah, but actually like you should drop the picture off at my office. And then like she shows up and then he's like, Well actually would it be that hard for you couldn't you just show me them titties?

Like now? What? This is Kent Kent Sterman that did this. She reluctantly complied. Sturman insisted she collect the tickets at his office, but when she turned up, he refused to let her leave until she quote showed him the real thing, unquote. Law enforcement sources say this is Ken. Later told her boyfriend and her father, prompting her dad to furiously confront Sturman at an arranged meeting, uh, according to sources. Uh it was there that Sturman Offered the father a five-figure sum to keep quiet. So I'm guessing probably ten grand. But the dad was. That could be a lot of different monies. But whatever it is, Kent Sturman, I'm not sure if you guys get this, but this guy's been working with Ron DeSantis.

They're really close. They've been friends for like a really long time. And you figure this has got to be like a pretty stand-up guy, right? This guy doesn't seem sketchy. Right? No, no. But yes, here delay I yeah, okay, fine. I wanted to see uh your child's tits, but I could give you some money. He reports it to the police. And um it was unf and you know, and sadly the guy took his own life because, you know, or as some people in my family chose to say, good. And I said, whoa I won't name any names, but good is what my wife said. I would I I uh wouldn't say good, I would say the world of place with that action. We've been admonished by the part-time Kurt Vonneguts in our life to never never notice when somebody's being a shit Uh I I um he the world is better off after the actions he he took.

Um when w did this uh scoop C come out the oh yesterday. But hang hang on, because there's another really good part to this, I I think. Um so uh uh so you know understandably the guy's like you know he's in a bit of a bind He's uh, you know, about to be kind of outed as a t as a as a uh you know, a a titty purchaser. Um, she flirted with me, I flirted with her, she consented to be in my office, you know. You know, w when she was younger, you know, that's the key. Uh as a convicted sexual predator, he would have been looking at fifteen to twenty years, etcetera. So, you know, it is it's it's a horrible and it's Sad and it sucks. But subsequent ref r reporting brings out some other really good stuff.

Uh let's see they got his cell phone. Let me find S H E R. Jacks so the Jacksonville Sheri Sheriff's Office has repeatedly refused to comment on the investigation when contacted. All right. Understandably, like there's a lot going on at the JSO. They got a lot to like you know, um they're busy down there. Yeah, so but i it turns out that he also have been given extraordinary privileges by checks notes, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. They'd given him like a badge and a swipe card and he had his run of the sheriff's office because he was such like a beloved local character. Do. Um, let me go find the other. So this is the this is sort of the culmination of a lot of stuff that's been like happening since December.

Where like there's been these little dribs and drabs, but I this is the first time I've seen. Oh, here we go. Ten hours ago. Newsweek offers Rhon DeSantis and Kent Sturman's relationship explained. Oh that's Kardashians? I think so. Have you gotten to the Kardashian on Dave yet? I did. Somebody had to explain to me who that was. I was like, that person looks famous. Who is that? And they're like, that's whatever Chloe or Courtney or whatever. I was like, oh right, of course. I don't know who any of like the famous rappers are. I've heard names. Like, I don't know, Lil Scabies or whatever. You hear these terrible names of these grown men with face tattoos. Like, you know, it's little dingus or whatever or you know Well I mean the Big Father complex.

I it's very s g ups upsetting because there will be names of rappers that I will only know because they came from Chicago's South Side, which uh clear you know, I'm a I'm very much a part of that Well is that does somebody like Kanye count as that? Is he would you consider him from there? Did he grow up in like the the legit south side? Like he's from not like a a rich background? No, no, he was yeah, same. Well who there's other ones too, right? I mean like Kanye is the one that comes to mind. Oh uh wait is Chance chance chance the rapper or is he from there? No, where's he from? Yeah, he's you no he he well he's from um uh Illinois uh Chatham. Well no no no it's still Chicago. It's like southwest side.

The only reason I that's an important distinction is because of the factions and gangs in Chicago like different. Oh, so that's one of those things that's code like saying like if you say Hawthorne, California to somebody Like that's gonna mean different things to different people. Like to me that means oh that's where the beach boys are. Well no no no but like I would say, oh that's the neighborhood the beach boys are from, famously. But I think also Hawthorne is now more famous as like a, you know, a a gang ish neighborhood. But um anyways, I don't want to go on about this, but you know, uh this Jesus Christ. You know, and you know, the thing is Ken Sturman probably doesn't didn't like the way that he was, you know, but I mean one thought that comes to one's mind that makes one say things like one instead of I is one thinks, yeah, you th with like look how out on the edge this guy got in this one case where how it escalated apparently.

From like creepy contact to asking for a photo to asking for a visit to asking for, you know, a free on-site show. And you're like, is you think that's the first time this has ever happened? I got a feeling somebody like this doesn't go that far out on a limb one time. No, but I wouldn't. And someone who is friendly with the sheriff's office I'm I don't wonder. Yeah. If it was the first time, I don't think that that is a um, you know, abstaining himself. situation, I feel like that's like Epsteining um uh unaliving himself, as people say on YouTube, so they don't get demonest demonetized. Like 'cause if it was the first time, uh, it seems like that could be something that was covered up. However, if it was a if you the sheriff is like, okay, seriously Y you gotta keep it cool.

Yeah, like listen, whatever you end up doing with these ladies, and they are ladies, whatever you're doing, I mean look at her. Look at look at the way she was dressed when I attracted her to my office with Taylor Swift tickets. But you know, the thing is w once the dads on the crocs, oh wow. The giblets, right. Mm-hmm. That was a bad mean joke. And then so is that those little pins you put on your shoes? Yeah. Yeah. They're called giblets. Yeah. Oh, is it those little strap-on badges people put on their shoes? Yeah, but no no the little crocs. I've never heard the word gibblet used to refer to shoe decorations. I believe it much like the Man of the Week, it is copyrighted. Uh Giblet said Tell me more about cat oh that's a name that's been ruined for me.

Oh I uh sorry, Gib It's not gibblitz. Oh well that I don't like that at all. Giblitz is adorable. That's what I call all my 13-year-old girls that come to my office, my little giblets. Want some gravy? Want daddy's gravy? No. No. Oh, oh. Um But you know, you know, that's that's that's that's our can't. Now see that would be a good Friday night nineties uh ABC TV show. That's our can't. Does he have a catchphrase? Let's see. Okay. If um if I I don't have high hopes for this, but we only learn by making errors. If Kent Sturman, age 50, were a care See, this is the kind of thing where it is actually easier to speak. I should probably be speaking right now. were a character on uh 90s ABC comedy, What Would His I mean, you know, did I do that would be pretty good.

What would his catchphrase be? Phrase me. Never go out of style. Um if Kent Sherman, a 50-year-old character on a 90s AB6, were to have it could be something like age is just a number, but wisdom is forever. What if he liked um let's see, hang on. It's almost done. What if he liked young Music enthusiasts. Oh. Well let's see what uh ChatGPT says. If Kent Sturman, a fifty year old character who enjoys the company of young music enthusiasts, were to have a catchphrase on a nineties ABC comedy, it could be something like Keep it groovy, youngsters. Or shake it off, as a sailor would say. Um I'll I'll I'll keep I'll return to this later. Do you want to take another break? Can't can't Kent's version.

Oh god. Oh Kent's people. What does what does he do we know what he uh duh did? Oh, um let's see. So I want to look for job Nope, that's jobs at the newspaper. Yeah. Um I mean he's I think he's a He's a political operator. I think he's something like uh you know, he's a guy behind the scenes and like a lobbyist kind of person, I think. But I'm not sure. Like what Roger Stone would be if he wasn't Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I see. I see. We can lo this will be a developing story. I this may I kind of somehow doubt this will be the last we hear of this, but I'm kind of it's a little bit surprised, especially in the Pussy Hack community. I'm kind of surprised I haven't seen more about this. Um and for now I'm very much surprised that you haven't seen more about this.

Because you move in those circles. I don't move in listening to one political show a a week is a lot of things. I'm not talking about podcasts, Alex. I'm talking about I'm talking about the discourse. You love the discourse. I don't love the discourse. I mm you sure know a lot about it. No, no, I didn't I didn't know. You're always correcting me on like I'm saying I like the wrong trans youtuber. Do you know why why can't you be an ally? Why can't you be an ally to your people? I know. I know. Why can't you be an ally to the allies? You should you should where's your flag? Keep it groovy, youngsters. Uh do another one, but with a Taylor Swift lyric. If Ken Sturman, a 50-year-old character who appreciates Taylor Swift's music, were to have a catchphrase on a 90s ABC comedy, it could be something like, Shake it off, folks!

We're never out of stock. Yep, there we go. That's what I wanted. That's really what I wanted. That's not even funny. Well, I wanted to give me five more Okay. I would I would also encourage you to tell it that you didn't think it was funny. Like steer it in the r yes, yeah. Um oh shit. Okay. And so listen, uh, in band. After this we'll talk about the challenge. Yes. Here are five more catchphrases for Kent Sturman. This is one of those Max Temkin kind of names. Kent Stirman. No, it's like you know how Max like would have Max would have the like the funniest fucking way of saying something. And even like to this day, like to last night as we were recording Syracuse said two words to me, but he said it like Max and I fucking laugh.

You know what he said? He said unconventional fancy Which is such like a Kent Sturman. Kent Sturman, uh you know here are five more catchphrases for Kent Sturman, a 50-year-old character who appreciates Taylor Swift's music fitting for a 90s ABC comedy. Hey, don't blame me, love made it's crazy. You need to calm down. We've got bad blood. I've got a blank space and I'll write your name. We're just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake it off. Life's got its wildest dreams, but we're out of the woods. Now one with free concert tickets. Um I have Kent Stirman if Is the rule of three, you know? Hey buckle up kids, free tunes are coming our way. What? I don't know enough about Taylor Swift to know if that's a lyric.

You know what I like that you know what I like that song where she pretends to play banjo? I like that song mean. I like that song. Uh you like that song? I is that we're gonna be so why you gotta be so mean. Oh, I thought it was rude Why you gotta be so rude? I'm not a swifty. I uh do do you know the song that's a really good song? It's from like when she was more of a country singer. I don't. I mean I'm sure if I heard it I would be like, oh yeah, that's the Taylor's banjo song. Yes. Kent Sturman. Sturman Nerman. Sturm Dragon. Kent Sturmundrang. See that's a free headline for somebody. Do you get that joke? Sturm and Drang? Is this uh like Dunter Memphlin? It's German it's a German phrase from German literature called Sturmendrang, which that stands as a sort of genre of like s kind of slightly gothic German literature.

Sturmendrang mean German means Storm and Stress. Oh. So Dr. Drang, I think, got his name from that because he's Dr. Stress. Oh wow. Uh Merriam Webster is defined and Oh my god, we made that joke on Rectors last night too. But Sturman Sturm and Drang, I've said it enough now that maybe it should be the title of the episode. Sturm and Drang You know how I always remember Ken Sturman? It's it's cause that was in the name of that episode for when they got canceled. So I always I always remember that. That's people a year from now. What was going on with those guys? Well, they weren't technically guys. Jordan D. Peterson Says they're a lot. Esther is asterisk. Esther is asterisk asterisk. Woke moralists.

Took a took-too, took a took-a tuk, boo, boo, boo, boo, took-a-tiggity, to kick-to-kit, to get to kick-tick-tick-t I take a two, boom pink, pink, pin, put the trick out. Talk about a beach. Oh man. Storp and drag, snarp and drag. Brrrrp. Ticket tikka tikka tiki tiki tiki tik-tink This challenge was yours, Merlin. Huh? Huh? It was your challenge this week. I'm trying to reduce bleeds so I can't really hear anything. Oh You haven't uh bled uh too often for me, so if you want to crank it up a little bit. Are you a Christian emotion? Crank it up. Christian emo song. Wait, give me that give me that lyric again real quick. What did you say? You haven't bled enough? Yeah, I've been blood uh what was it blood on me lately, so if you wanna crank it up Okay, I think I got it.

You haven't bled enough for me. You gotta imagine there's lots of big drums too. Imagine it being like a little bit like um Like uh Sunny Day Real Estate kind of thing. Oh, ooh God, you're right. Alright, now I need uh to put in or or at least send to you the audio I'm hearing because it's like you have an emo gate on and the guitar is coming in and out of the way. Okay. And I like this riff right here. Isn't that a good riff? You would be just totally in line to open for Jimmy EWorlds. Oh. That was enjoyable. Well you know, I mean I don't know if you know this about me. but like well I was about to say I came up. I was in my 30s when, you know, the research triangle bands were popular. Well like so like I'm I'm all about like the octaves.

Although the dips the new Megan Trader song, very popular. What is it about the octaves? I don't have a fucking pick. This is killing me. Here talk for a minute. I'm gonna go find a pick. Alright, oh Merlin Mann's actually going to go find a pick. Although just using a rock to play your guitar is very punk and impressive. I don't want to be one of those people who's like, hmm, there's no good punk bands anymore. But they're uh if anyone has any good uh uh punk bands for me, like actual not actual punk, but y you know what I mean. Like no rhythm, just yelly yell, hit me up. Does Merlin have a pick? Yes, I do. The problem with being organized but not tidy is you have all your picks in someplace, but you don't know where.

Exactly. Yes. Like you know, super chunk songs where you do like a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit It's hard to do on on acoustic. This is very weird though. It's very you're very good at that. Like it feels like I'm in a base Oh, I can just see the Christmas lights Oh. Oh that was pleasant. I put a stick in your spokes. You better laugh at my jokes. You better memorize this face. You better stay. in my good graces. Oh. Did you like Super Chunk back in the day? Yes. This this diversion is making me uh just very happy. This is This sounds wonderful.

Oh boy. All right, um, we'll cut all that out. Nope, nope, nope, nope. It's gonna I mean oh it's you better memorize this face. You better stay in my good graces. I like that song. Alex, I'll put a stick in your spokes. Oh. And you better laugh at my jokes. I'm not done. You better memorize this face. You better stay in my good graces. Slack motherfucker. Alex, I'm working. Okay? I'm working, but I'm not working for you. No. No, Slack motherfucker. No, no, no, no. Digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, dig. Challenge. Now I sound like a pink song. Wow, let's part's crazy. No, you sound like a fucking like dead of W Morning? Yeah, of morning zoo. But not a good paragraph. Raise your challenge if you have an ass and you are sleazy.

Court and can start man is so easy no no I'll put a stick in your spokes and you better laugh at my jokes slack motherfucker Darling, what was this week's challenge? This week's challenge is to just do the thing. Um and so that's funny how. You did it, you just did the thing. I'm such a special guy. I'm a really special guy. And um this challenge is uh is very important to me And it what sucks about it is it's it's the reason this is important to me is partly because it is so it's difficult to talk about, not because it's, you know, sad to talk about or weird to talk about. It's just I it's very uh what's the word I want? Ineffable, inchoate. It's an emerging idea for me. that I'm I'm at that the worst possible stage of a new idea, a new Merlin idea, which is where like I have a very extremely strong feeling about it.

I have a very strong feeling about the direction I should be going to pursue it. But I have very little clarity or precision about describing what the thing is, and yet finally, worst of all, I'm incredibly touchy about how it seems like a very obvious thing to say. I mean, you you know my stuff. You used to like my stuff. Isn't that a thing I do? Isn't that totally a thing I do? Mm, I was going to ask for an example of a previous idea that you were touchy about until it was fleshed out. Because I can't think of another like I what's really did you ever uh I mean did you ever publicly talk about them them though? Because I'm I'm trying to think of one. Well I mean like for example the phrase like uh you take us something like thought technology, which I is a is a j something John Roderick first said, and I don't even know if he knew what it meant when he said it.

But it's I know what it is now. Like I know what a thought technology is. Right. And I mean, you know, the worst thing the Rep just defines a definition as something that's used to define something. And you can't use the word in the definition. But in some ways, you know, it's like To make another Roderick reference that's pointless, it's like trying on a jacket. You're not committed to being that jacket, let alone wearing that jacket for the rest of your life. So A thought technology is the idea that I can try on an idea, and this is in some ways actually really related to Keats' negative capability idea. Like I'm I have an ability. to get very into this thought or get very into this notion without committing to it.

Mm-hmm. Right? And like this is a I mean, I think you could argue I'm probably putting all that horribly and yes, ChatGPT helped me find that Keats quote, finally. Which my ex-wife uh gave me a heart for, I thought was nice. Um but the um but but Keats said that and and so here's the thing though, like Uh well, m arguably in some ways the backbone of intellectual pursuits is about that concept of thought of a thought technology. Like a philosopher or a philosophy student is going to like I'm gonna commit to this and I'm with good faith in thinking about this with absolutely no commitment to changing anything in my life as a result of it. It and that's become such a powerful idea for me because the most important part of that in some ways is the I'm not committed to this.

It's like when I was living in Tallahassee and if you made a joke about crack, people thought you did crack. Or like you know what I mean? Like you were people like just knowing uh knowing about analingness makes you sound like a practitioner. Yes. And it's like, well that's I mean I guess, but there are probably also people eating ass that don't have a name for it. You know, they just call it Saturday. Well, you know, the kids are grandmas. So is it We're gonna eat out. Button. Hello. I'm Kent Sturman. And I just want to say buckle up, kids, because free tunes are coming our way. Oh God. I need to watch six hours of SVU to punish myself for this. Be as I tried to explain as I was explaining my explaining last week, it's that like sometimes it's so useful for me to have a model, a mental model, or a reframe of something.

I feel like, you know, there's so much stuff in life where We know the thing we're supposed to do. I mean if you were to like shake somebody awake at night and say like, oh, should you save for retirement and probably eat less you know, uh complex car or eat eat fewer refined sugars, they go, Well of course I know to do that. It's like, well, what have you done in the last week? to move you just agreed to me that you should be eating l fewer refined sugars. What it what about your behavior in the last week has gotten you closer to the direction of that rather than anything else in the world? And you go, well nothing. Okay, well then why aren't you doing that Well, I don't know, man. I know. I there's a lot I got a lot of stuff to do.

I gotta take out the trash. I gotta read this article about Kent Sturman. I gotta do all this stuff. But like there's uh always a such a fundamental disconnect And I think this does I know you you hate Daniel Kahneman for some reason, but this very much goes to the thinking fast and slow idea of like the fast thinking idea is of course I know the right thing to do. And then the slow thinking idea is like, oh yeah, but am I actually fucking doing that? To operation as Max says, to operationalize a good idea, yes, this is where we get into stuff like you do need infrastructure, you do need rehearsal. You do need all these different things that I'm that's a big, big, big wad of behavioral theory that I'm constantly reckoning with and trying to write about and think about.

And sometimes I don't have a way to really like quite describe it yet. And that's kind of like where I am right now with this general idea, this constellation of ideas all round. Just do the thing. continuity and what I'm now very clunky calling integrative continuity. And and and bump avoidance. So that's a big wad of stuff to talk about, but you know roughly what those things mean, right? I don't know what you mean uh in terms of continuity. I do Yeah. Continuity is another kind of it's the adjacent issue to the to bump avoidance. So bump avoidance is the idea that I realize as somebody with anxiety Who who suffers from anxiety and ADHD that I'm I tend to focus more on something that could become a bump rather than just finishing the thing.

And the example I gave last week that was so important for me was putting water in my dishwasher and realizing that it feels like my goal is to not spill any water, but that's a secondary or tertiary goal to the real goal of getting water into the dishwasher. But once one the whole idea of just do the thing, which yeah sure fine. Yeah, it sounds like a thing from Nike in the eighties, but there's more to it than that. Because just do the thing is a way of reminding yourself, gently, guiding yourself. Reminding yourself that what is it you're really trying to accomplish here? And are the steps or are the things that you're doing right now necessary? Are they vital? to doing the actual thing. And then the real wisdom comes out of interrogating that more deeply and saying, well is that th this is what you talked about.

Is that thing even worth doing? And the other example I gave is, and this is straight out of the document, is like instead of focus on an outcome, this is how this kind of started, focus on an outcome rather than the details of an implementation strategy. for any given thing. And the example I give is I feel like the guy, did you ever see the movie The Freshman with uh Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick? No. Oh man. The the guy who was the neighbor on the Jeffersons, uh Paul, I forget his name, but that English guy from the Jeffersons. Then much older in the nineties, plays a f uh a film teacher whose name is Fleber. And um and his name is Fleber. And he keeps referring to the book as The Fleber.

Have you read The Fleber? He keeps referring to and of course it's his own book that he made all the students buy. Have you read the Fleber? Why haven't you read the Fleber? I always feel like I'm saying, well, as as discussed in The Man. And the example I give there was, okay, for me, and this is a real world example, this is something I run into almost every, honestly, almost every day. You're like you're going, okay, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. I'm running around, I'm doing stuff, doing stuff, uh Uh stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff. I re I need this I need this one USB cable. Let's say, for example, like to get I had to get some stuff off my camera for the little lord for a project.

And so, okay, I need a USB-C to Lightning cable. And I I know there's one that I really like in this box. It's like a good one. I know there's not too many crayon marks on the lightning. I know that it's a nice crisp like solid cable that's really good. So what do I do? I start going through boxes trying to find a specific cable. Well I I try to catch myself doing that and say, wait a minute, w what is the thing you're really trying to do here? Well, I need to get photos off of here. Well, is there a faster way to do that? Or uh another new new phrase? from this week for me, is there a faster path? If there's a faster path, take the faster path. Great. Does this make sense so far? But like have you ever done that?

Have you ever gone like I want to find this specific roll of duct tape that I think is over here somewhere? And for me, that means like now I'm in the garage, now I'm going to the office, I'm checking there. Instead of just going, first off, first level, wait. You just need a cable to do a thing. Or really ultimately, you know, you haven't gotten to the good stuff yet of like do you even need to be doing this? Which in that case I do. But do you follow? Like instead of trying to find a specific cable, just get the thing done. Find the cable that works. If you're if you need to cut up vegetables for something that you're late bringing to a potluck, don't spend an hour stressing yourself out trying to find the perfect knife in your house.

Or in my case, if you're going on vacation, why spend two days stressing about whether you have the right HDMI cables for any kind of TV you connect to? No one cares. Out of scope. Drop it. Just do the thing. And then do the thing here, like I said last week, it's just gonna be a good dad on vacation. And in that case, be a good dad or be, you know, be a helpful dad of like getting the photos off here without again stressing yourself out. A secondary knock-on effect is like, now I'm taking out boxes and I'm getting mad and I can't find it. So yeah, first of all, focus on the outcome, which in that case is, you know, the intermediate outcome is get these photos onto a drive. But it became comic, it that becomes comical, right?

Sorry, side rail. So well my kid uh is fucking amazing. Just got into two AP classes for next year. I'm so excited. Um and you know he has a he takes a uh class twice a week for three hours a week on on how to be good at having a job. How great an idea is that. Oh my Oh my god. How to do a resume, how to do my kid's 15. How to how to go into a room with somebody you've never met and have a job interview and they stage that. is not a good idea when you're fifteen. But again, again, f uh as we know from the Fleber, like, you know, it's learning is important and failure is important, but the stakes don't have to be everything. Let your kid rehearse and yourself rehearse things in an environment that isn't you know, potentially deadly.

Great practice, right? So the kid had to do this thing for Spanish class uh and conduct and like go it's a really neat project. So the project for Spanish was Like you're gonna make a dish. Pick a dish you want to make, like from an an area of the world that interests you, a Spanish-speaking area of the world. And find a dish that you think you like making. And then it's a whole this is like this is the kind of stuff they come up with that like really good like liberal arts colleges or private schools, like where you can get away with shit like this. You're gonna go to you have to go to a physical grocery store. You're only allowed to learn ten new vocabulario words for this. Or you know you can warn more, but you we're encouraging you to learn up to ten new words and you have to go talk to people at the grocery store in Espanol, a Espanol.

You need to get these things, and then you're gonna cook it. And when you cook it, you're gonna shoot yourself with a you know video camera. so to speak, you know, doing it and then you're gonna edit that video together. You're gonna do the voiceover in Espanyol, explain what you did. Isn't that a cool project? That's so fun. I mean I would not enjoy it. Yeah, so the little word made up but oh that's so cool Found recipes, got the pork shoulder, followed the recipe, and because for once in my fucking life, Alex, I actually have a usefulness to another person. Because I'm able to bring home, you know, the Elgato Um like camera or like the you know the the what's it called the system with the telescoping um things.

Oh, the uh fuck. The rig. The basically a rig for having cameras and lights and stuff like that. It was really as simple as like, okay, point the GoPro at Billy's face. and um and then have the iPhone pointed down at where the food preparation is happening. The And then we looked at all the options and he's looks like he's at least gonna give iMovie a try. I was like iMovie is pretty actually more powerful than it looks. It's very easy to use, but still pretty powerful for what you need. And I'd rather not spend $300 on Final Cut if we don't need it. Um Yeah no. And and D script didn't work. But he was very delighted that his like giant his 4K video that was twenty-two minutes long dragged right into iMovie, no problem.

But um but so at that point, so what do we got here? We've got photos. and videos on the GoPro. We've got photos and videos on the iPhone. This session took place over two contiguous days. And my job is to get that stuff to to the kid. So anyway, I'll be quick about it. No, I won't. It's already too late. But like I started with like, oh I'll use my new uh I'll use my new um goober. Like my new USB dingus that's got, you know, the f the flippy thing where it can be USB C or A, like a cool little like SSD. I'm dragging stuff onto there. It's taking a real long time because, you know, you now the stuff from the camera Stuff from the iPhone has to get synced to the cloud. The stuff from the cloud has to get synced.

And I thought, you know, we'll just shoot in 4K for fun. Why not? I'll probably export it as 1080. That should be plenty enough. And uh and so we it all went like pretty okay, but it was going real slow. And then finally, I'm on the new computer that I've given the little lord to use, um, an MBA, a very recent uh MacBookera that's wonderful. And I was like, wait a minute, what am I doing? I was like, what am I doing? I was like, give me that. I log into the computer as me. Right? All my photos are there in iPhone or whatever it's called this week. I go to photos, I drag them, I command shift E. I export them into the shared folder on that Mac. Because what? Because I was and this is not even a bad one, Alex.

I was so focused on implementation strategy that I lost track of the fact I just need to get You know what I'm saying? I was getting so hung up. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I was so hung up on thinking about how do I get this from the iPhone to my MacBook Pro onto a uh USB uh stick and then I get the USB stick, I give it to the kid, I make sure everything turned out right. There's no encoding problems. I didn't use the wrong fat 24 or whatever format and And then finally I was like, no, just Oh fuck that. Yeah. Just we export it all. It's on the same comp I just go onto my account and export it onto his account, and we're done. And you know what? I mean, who knows? I I I don't know how much longer it would have taken me if I hadn't caught myself doing that.

I can tell you, almost guarantee you, almost promise you, that I would have caused myself and my family unnecessary stress. Two extra Sturm and Drang that was utterly unnecessary because I was thinking more about implementation strategy instead of what? Just do the thing. So that's one example of just do the thing is like just for a minute, dude, scrape all the fucking barnacles off your eyeballs and like look at what it is you're actually trying to do here. Is it and then interrogate it. Keep interrogating it. Go deeper and say, like, well, is this serving the deeper thing I'm trying to do here? Which I guess is something normal people do all the time But I could get lost in two weeks of busy work on top of busy work and yak shaving unless I remember to just do the thing.

I am curious about two two different th things you said, which is, you know, g Getting the thing done does sound a little bit like perfect being the enemy of good or or whatever. That's actually that is in the thing that I prepared yesterday in Obsidian. Even if it's not done, get it close enough and just keep moving. If a fester route appears, jump to the fester route. I literally wrote that last night. Uh that's that is very good. And th the faster r rote thing feels very m Mm well, I mean you said you said it, b uh barnacles o off of the eyes. You would not have been able to take the easier path or f or faster path and just do the thing a few years ago or w whenever that iCloud feature. Stress, yeah, for sure.

Ha well how how much of that do you think is you reframing Sure, reframing what needs to get done, but also keeping an open mind to new things. Which this I think might be why you are actually use AI stuff and have a curiosity because you were trying to figure out what the thing is that you want to do, like plug it into everything. You have to be careful that you don't that if one decides or ha uh if you want to be confident in life I think it's useful to r to try to ask yourself whether you're being confident about the right things in the right situation. Because being too confident about something you have no business being confident about is not helping anybody, especially yourself. Right.

So like that kind of like cocksure like seventy year old grandpa thing of running around and yelling at everybody, like that's a cautionary tale for me. The kind of the kind of confidence I would like is is a much more muscular kind of confidence which says like I'm just gonna keep my heart pure and keep trying to do the right thing. I'm gonna let myself be bul vulnerable. I'm gonna let myself be dumb. And I'm gonna let myself both ask and answer questions to myself about the value of how what I'm doing right now gets me the things that I want in life. You know, as Jerry says, you know, what is it Jerry says to Roman about like you know, how does this improve my position or whatever? And I and I I don't mean it to sound quite some Machiavellian, but no, I mean I've had I've had my butt the to say the very least, I've had my ups and downs with that.

But like the another example talking to Syracuse about something related last night, I was talking about comparing the days of using a Garmin GPS to using an iPhone today. Back then you had this little rectangle of preloaded maps and it would go Recalculating if you ever got off the the route that you told it it wanted because it the job of your of your new new V or what's it called? New V. The uh the job of our Garmin was to follow them with the directions well, directions. Sorry, namespace pollution. I tell my Garmin I'm here and I want to go there. Take me there. If the Garmin see if it ever sees me, it's almost like playing like Dragon's Lair, where like if it sees me doing anything that's not what it thinks the route should be, I'm failing at GPS.

Whereas today, um luckily uh yeah the maps are don't have to be preloaded. Things can be dynamic and Google map maps or Apple Maps or Waze or whatever will accommodate whatever it is that I'm doing right now dynamically. So if it you know make make a u-turn as soon as possible. Make a u-turn as soon as possible. Make a u it doesn't do that anymore. Now it just says turn left if you still want to go to McDonald's. Cool. Like it understands. Like I'm still in motion. I'm still going somewhere. And you know, do I really need to like reset this entire route for you to not be constantly yelling at me about how I'm doing it wrong? But that's the kind of confidence I want. I don't want the confidence that I'm that I know everything and always make the right decision.

I want the more, like I say, the more muscular and masculine confidence of trusting that it won't undo me I mean it's it sounds like you almost want confidence that you're brain or process i is also going to be done. You know, trust is almost a a slightly better word than confidence in that instance. I have to trust. Well, not not not trust in the sense of like, you know, oh just you know, close your eyes and think of England, hope everything will turn out all right. That kind of dumb American Optimism, whatever the fuck that means. Like, oh, we don't actually improve anything, but we just choose to assume it's getting better. Um, not that, but like the the like the con the confidence that's more of like this will not be just fucking calm down.

You need to calm down. Music's coming. What's a what's a phrase I already forgot his catchphrase. Um Yeah And that but like and then so that's like some dumb like like I say like one oh one level stuff, but there is more to it than that. As far as the continuity stuff, it's just this idea of like You know, like I said, or bump avoidance. That idea of like instead of focusing on all the ways that I can imagine in the world that I would be tripped up. How about instead I see my life as a continuity, as a contiguous line from birth to death, where I'm always moving in some direction, and the agency that I have is to course correct along the way. to say like if I'm still moving in the direction I'd like to be moving for this period of time.

If I'm if my attention and my time are going to to the things that I claim are valuable to me. Is this related to everything? Fuck yes, it's related to everything. But just do the thing does not mean like, you know, I'll go run a marathon, you have no business running, or quit smoking, even though you've never successfully quit smoking. You f find new ways to be mad at or disappointed in yourself. It's more just a way of saying, like, r remember w in some ways the the just do the thing part, the most important thing is remembering what the thing is. And then evaluating if that thing is valuable to be doing. Uh that's where I continue to just be stuck in a way that my uh my Like trying to uh stimulate my brain into figuring out what that is.

But it doesn't it feel in reach? It uh Which can be frustrating. Oh this idea exactly. That's that's why it is frustrating. Well like but no it's not it's not like you're trying to do something you know you can't do. It's not like you're trying to like just decide by dint of your own Well, how do you know uh how do you n I mean, that's I don't think that's true because Well a phrase I've grown fond of it seems so simple like but on the one hand like are you man uh not manic enough sorry but like are you like oh I've decided that I can fly like a bird And I can just I can I can alight on a leaf. Right. And it's like, well no, that's that's a lot to expect out of yourself. But to think that I could I could see the benefits of a qual uh of a quality of life improvement that has been I could I could imagine a world where my quality of life improves because I'm more engaged with the with the seemingly minute details of what I'm doing and to have the mindfulness to catch myself when I'm going too far adrift from something I'm finding myself too attracted to focusing on something that's not the thing and that can't make me happy.

Which is hard. And where do you where do you notice that struggle? Where does it where do you like feel like ah like you know what I mean? Like the oh I did the thing. I did the thing again. God damn it. Like when do you notice that? I have uh uh everywhere all the time, everything k all of this everywhere all at once. Because I When I think about, you know, continuity, I just think about m moving forward. But it is the the direction is not Ever can can or has not been consistent and it's i it's also difficult to f Figure out when the thing is is done. Well, for m me, my the th j just doing the thing was going to get my iPhone fixed because I had to get stop getting my finger cut on the broken screen.

And that is what Apple cares for. And I just kept putting it off because that's n it's that's not important. That's not like a uh that that's like a a bump that I just n a t a tiny l almost literal bump I needed to take care of because it sh is leading me to the next, you know, m metaphorical thing. But I mean, it's the I guess still the why of the thing that Yeah, you mentioned that I think you mentioned that a couple times though like because if you don't tr trust that you've chosen well, then you're you it's not difficult to end up undermining yourself along the way to like be doing these sort of anti-pep talks to yourself about oh come on you know this is all bullshit anyway. Mm-hmm. Or something like that.

We listened to the same uh what's I think the same episode of uh what's next to the slate podcast about like the the future or or whatever. And Alex is referring to a slate show called What Next TBD about the future of technology. It's on weekends. And with friend of the show, Lizzie O'Leary. Oh, she's so cool. It's two different shows. Also, that African-American lady's been on a lot lately. I think Mary's left her desk. She's not around as much anymore. You can find her on Mary's desk. She likes to remind us. Talking about TikTok? The TikTok one? Yeah the uh just the well the influencer one in in general. The influencer one Well the there uh when's teaching other teens how to be influential teen influencers.

It's teen influencers all the way down. Yeah. And uh that story had the very uh think about the the children uh aspect. I didn't love how it was framed. I I get pretty often on on that show. They're they're like they're trying to they're trying to sound like the the smartest fretful mom at the coffee clutch. Like not the dumb st Stress fretful mom who says things nobody agrees with and makes them roll their eyes, but the really smart one who's like, I don't know. It is something we should think about. We believe our trans children, but but do we really want to help them be who they want to be? I mean isn't that kind of radical? To actually help them be the human being we all know they actually are.

Isn't that problematic? I mean the hell I don't know. Did you see a thing in the New York Times about it? Yes, I saw all the things in the New York Times about it. Apparently it's all very scary. Mm, people my age and I I think anyone who makes stuff on the internet is literally going through right now. Is they're like, all right. I wanna just do the thing, but what if my thing is not viable? Or where, you know, like when you are going to sweat I the the small stuff? Like, should you be sweating the small stuff in the TikTok that you want to promote or influence and anything? I mean I I I I I wanna I'm not even joking. I want to understand what you're talking about. You're talking about a a a broader, almost existential question.

about like your place in the world in some ways. But the the the this can be or I see this as being a a broad question. I mean people who work at Cinnabon Prob probably they they have a basic decision every morning. Do I get up and go to my job at Cinnabon or do I do something different from my job at Cinnabon? There's not that that many options. You're not encouraged to improv that much at Cinnabon. with your work schedule or your buns, right? But you're talking about like when you work on your own, when you work truly independently, like if you don't like the game, how do you change the game or do you find a different game? And I'm not just talking about in a professional sense, like if if you work at Cinnabon and you enjoy it it, uh it's like, okay, what do I uh like sh uh sure, I decide to go to work and I desi decide to come home.

But m like like okay, how what do I want to do with my kids that's actually going to uh help them in a way that doesn't fuck them up and the in a way that makes me a a better parent. Like what what is the thing? that that you need to do. Like it can being a TikTok person or a parent? No, no, no. I'm saying literally anything. Literally anything you need to do. It's From 'cause you but something you've undertaken as a thing you're doing, as a what I would call a project, right? Yeah. Because the project can be an i influencery type thing which makes me uh w want to puke. And in that case it's really hard to just decide what the thing is, but it's also I assume pretty hard to decide what the thing is when you are trying to uh bond with your kid.

It's just like okay do I help them with my homework. And if that if that is the thing, then the thing is like, okay, yeah, let's just sit down and don't be a dragon, don't get in the way. I don't exactly understand how the parent parts are related, but like that's a big part of it for me is like just not not you know trying to keep my dick out of the mashed potatoes as much as possible. Like I don't need to this like here's here's a real basic one where we could all take two big steps back and say like um is it possible that I could whatever situation I'm in right now um is it possible that I could make this less about me? And can I see benefit potentially to uh one or more people if I make this less about me?

Which is worth uh my asking a lot. It's again adjacent to this is why God I kind of want everything I do now to just be a wiki. But I do would like it to be really related where you could say like this is really related to like read the room. Like before you come in and assert yourself, read the room in life. Like, do you is like is this are you just here because this is a problem you like yelling at people about? You just are you just re- are you here mainly because you like to remind a kid that they're running late on a project? Or like are you available to help as needed and just get the fuck out of the way and let them fail on their own terms? Th but that's such an opporant idea to so many people.

Like I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't keep my sense of self about what a good person and parent I am if I didn't fuck my kid up with a lot of ultimately very pointless negative feelings about how they should do life more like me. They should listen to records like I did. They should see movies like I did. They should experience the same privations that I hated because look how great I turned out. I was never happy as a child. Why would you be? What is happiness as a child? That the thing w You were talking about it. Yeah. Well, yeah, in that project you knew what the thing was and you were able to do it. Well I mean I try. I mean everything but things everything's everything. In some ways it's all it is all related.

But like it's you don't get better at anything without practicing. Or put differently, like you will rarely succeed at something the first time because that's not how life works. And also, guess what? You're gonna, boy, you're gonna hate when y'all like grow up and actually learn this shit, it's gonna drive you so fucking crazy. Just because you're good at something doesn't mean it's the right thing to be doing right now. And guess what? Let's go deeper. Just because you think you're good at something doesn't mean you're good at something. And just because you've convinced yourself you're good at something doesn't mean everybody should agree with you. And like every single step in that way, there was an option on the table the entire time, which is shut the fuck up, read the room, and learn what the world needs from you rather than what you think will keep you happy for five minutes.

Because that's kind of what being an adult is. It doesn't have to be about having a savings account and oh the house I'll never afford. No. Like just all that dumb shit. God, everybody's so fucking stupid. What it really is ultimately ultimately is about is like in some ways what it can be about is changing in ways that are uncomfortable to you, not because it makes you happy or confident, but because despite it making you unhappy and unconfident because that's what growth is. If your goal in life is never having to buy a second pair of pants, well then that you're not gonna you're not gonna be allowed to grow because your legs will be too long for the pants to which you're committed. But like you could ask yourself, well, just do the thing.

Well the thing I've decided is I'm gonna be exactly this way forever. My father was a neo-Nazi, I'm a neo-neo-Nazi, like uh whatever it is, or whatever dumb shit. I'm a I'm a dumb fucking racist who n has absolutely no reflection about the the the terrible ironies and hypocrisies that upon which my entire life and business is based. There's never a good day to start doubting what you do for a living and how your thinking brought you there. Yeah, that's really fucking hard. But guess what? Your body's more important than your pants ultimately. And your life is more important than your body. Like, what are you, what is it that you're really committed to? Are you committed to something sustainable?

And are you like, are is the thing that you're obsessed with about your personal brand, identity, and sense of self What to what is that moor in life? What have you done in the last month that's been really great as a result of that? What have you done in the last three years? Sorry, five years. What have you done that's that you're really, really extremely proud of? Not not for LinkedIn, not for your resume, not for your scrapbook, not for not for your salesman of the month plaque, but like what is some stuff where you go like I handled that so much better than I expected and it ended up going really well and it helped people. Rather than like I really showed that guy in traffic. Or I really, I really talk down like that particular Jordan Peterson uh person, like like There's no it there's no interest bearing account for dunks in life.

Like what you're ultimately stuck with every day and every night for the rest of your life is what whatever you're ultimately committed to bringing into the world and what you're what you're committed to like stewarding in life. Like, that's not sexy. But don't worry, because nobody wants to fuck you. Nobody has ever really wanted to fuck you. And like once you get your arms around that, oh my God, it's so freeing. No one's scared of you and nobody wants to fuck you. So who are you now? Well, I hope to God that you're a person who figures out that there's a thing that's worth doing and then asking yourself if you're doing that thing for the right reasons and in the right way. Are you are you looking for a USB cable or you are you looking for a sense of certainty about boxes?

Don't listen to this again 20 years. See if it sounds different. Sorry. Well, the most important takeaway is that literally no one wants to To fuck you. What what is what does sand piss mean? I cuz it's Florida. You've never um like You've never crossed sand that I know. Well, I'm not sure. What is the piss there's saying the governor of Florida is like sand that's piss? That's in no like uh like sand that has been pissed upon. That is sand piss. I mean I guess some people might call it piss sand. But you're not talking about soil, you're talking about sand. Like on a beach. Yes. Yes. Okay, and so that would be also that like it would be impermanent because it would just sink into was really sand is just small stones made of glass.

That that it would just go through that and then down into the Earth's core of the piss? The okay. I I am doubting that you've come across a piss in in sand. Piss in sand. Yeah, we'll return to that. Okay, I guess we'll take another break. Um unless you want to do I could go into one Well aren't aren't we? So I th I think that that hello hello, hello Hello, hello I might be That's our old episode ungood. Talking to the belly button is a fancy sir! Uh I think we should append this Main episode over. Let's pick a challenge and that can be appended. Wait, is this a w is this the main show or the what are we doing right now? I I think that this is now the after sh show. Oh, and it can be a short one?

Yes. Do you like Todd Do you like Todd Runbridge? You like him? I do not know that name. Let's see. Couldn't I just tell you the way I feel? I can't keep it bottled up inside. And can we pretend, can we pretend that it's no big deal? Need nothing up to high. It's been a while since I played any of these songs. I know that one. No, you don't oh wait the Minuteman? You know that song? Yeah. Something like that. Let's say I got a number. You don't know that song. What is that? I think it's a political song for Michael Jackson to sing or Well I forget which song it is. Now I don't know how I feel like the oh wait, you have a pick now. The rock is gone. Oh I can do I can do anything, I can do it all Um, picking a challenge.

Well I'm gonna try and play this replacement song. You think of a challenge? I'm I'm looking um Are you picking a challenge? Do you want to uh to play with mid journey or or play with uh it's it's hard because mid jour i do is that something you can set me up with tell me how to do. sign up uh for people see what I'm doing join the Discord. Yes, uh but if you I believe if you pay extra, you can be any Discord? Get it on Uh no no no you need to join Mid Journeys Discord. I would love I would actually love to do this as what I would call a secondary challenge. I don't think there's enough there for it to be that interesting at this point, but I would love for I'm gonna selfishly ask you to get on and help me with that?

Yes. Um I guess I could put down my replacements and look at this like a person. Look me in the eye and tell me, I'm satisfied. Here comes Dick. He's wearing a skirt. Here comes Jenny Noche's bottom. Do you do you know the replacements? Do you know that band? Yeah. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Like you're at a funny age to like know them, but I think it's really cool. Well, because you know, the whenever there was a re-release of albums, I was a pitchfork. reader. Oh of course. And they would give it a 7. 8. Yeah, sure. Yeah, basically. Yep. There was a lot of except for Travis Morrison, which is why I will never uh darken the doorstep of that pitchfork site again I'm still mad about Travis Morrison twenty years ago.

Still mad. Still mad. It's zero. It was not. Fuck you. Okay. I'm going to look up the sha sha-sha-shy. Did you did you like the dismemberment plan when they were banned? Uh the what? Huh? The Dismemberment? So Travis Morrison was in a band called The Dismemberment Plan. Yes. Uh and they're they're pretty good and really weird. Like if you were to go back and listen to them right now Oh there one record that was still what's called? Seconds of Pleasure? No, that's that's a rock pile record. What the fuck is it called? It's called the name of the band is the Dismemberment Plan. The name of this band is Talking Heads. Dismemberment. Yeah, uh, it's called It's called Yeah. Oh god, this album fucking rules emergency and I.

Oh, show show notes. Yeah, but check out Emergency and I. It's pretty wild. Um, my jam from that, I mean of course I love the entire thing, but my jam is uh the seventh song, You Are Invited. The mm mm. But it's all good. It's all every every song on here is so good. Oh, The Ice of Boston's not on here. That's on another album, but that's a really good song. That was really one of the big live songs. Uh I'm going to look at the challenges. I would love your help with the because every time somebody does, I've every time I see these people show examples of the different you know, things and it's like stable diffusion versus the other one versus mid-journey. The lighting on the mid-journey ones is always so beautiful.

I don't know what it is about Midjourney, but like it yeah, it is a lot of like a hot chicks. But like whatever it is, like it the lighting on them is so gorgeous. I don't know how they do it. Can you mid-journey a good girl? The ooh ooh. I mean there are a lot of good girls. You should come up to my office. I got tickets, honk honk! Yeah, no What do you mean? It's me, it's me. It's me, penny, penny, penny worth. No, wait, no, penny wise. Pennyworth is the butler on Batman. And money money penny is the aging secretary with the wet seat, you said. Uh oh is the oh yes, the secretary. Oh, because of vaginal juices? Yes. No. Um challenges here. I Here you are. Oh, there you are. Use mid-journey. Watch how to blow how to blow up a pipe bomb.

Watch how to put it. It seems like those would be different things. How to blow up. How to blow up blow blow up a pipeline movie. How to blow up a pipeline. Is this about skateboarding? Oh god, climate crisis passed. Uh yeah. It's um I tried to watch the one about don't look up and I'm done now. I am officially done. I'm done. I'm done with climate drama. Oh, without a McKay? I am. Speedrun upgrade challenges. I mean speedrun upgrade challenges. Yeah, they they not do by they're not like do by Friday. They're doing all the do by Friday uh like p Th things out of their comfort comfort zone. Raycast is out of my comfort zone. I haven't used Raycast. I haven't I'm gonna use Raycast. I I learned literally last night that Hook is still around Hook is now Hookmark and Hookmark is a thing and they seem to be kind of narrowing their focus on what they're trying to do.

Have you seen Hookmark? It's in setup now. No. Links begin searching. Hello. I really enjoyed it. It's by that guy. It's like cognitive science guy. Interesting. Oh, interesting. Deep PDF links. What now? What now? I would trade Taylor Swift tickets for that. How deep does the link go? That's so great for that age. Read physical magazines, get e-tire's fixed, TK Survivor. I owe myself the shout with the shoes on something with birds. Boy, I'm bad at birds. I am trying I've bought I bought bird books. I've been reading bird books. I went on and bought myself breakfast the other morning at a local diner and I read my bird book. I think I'm bad at birds. But I'm very into them. What oh oh what about uh uh looking at the sky I know that we were going to try Oh yeah yeah yeah oh shit dogs You're not gonna believe what okay.

Oh my god, I just got sent a link at what is it now your time Two, three, four, four fifty two phone. It is four fifty-two PM. I got uh sent a link because my wife knows that I've been that one of my aspiration projects right now is is I got birds and sky. Um, and this is a link in the San Francisco Chronicle. This is from twenty-six minutes ago. Bay Area Stargazers will be happy to know that unlike last year, they have a good chance this week. Of viewing the annual spring meteor shower called the Lyrids, which are already underway and will peak over the weekend. Oh. So I mean, I would not turn well, let me go look at Carrot and see how my week looks weather wise, like visibility wise. But I would not hate that.

Look at the sky. That's the challenge. Yes. Look the challenge is is look at the sky. Okay, now look at the sky, right? So let's keep it loosey-goosey because that could also be kind of a little bit of a watch the you know, a look for the chimneys, right? It could be daytime, sky stuff. You know, it's also funny 'cause on our break, um uh um w uh where where I was, you know, doing different things on the thirty, forty five minute break. I went out and sat outside. Whoa. Did you touch touch some grass or touch the bang bang machine, stuff like that? So anyway, I went outside and every time you use somebody says touchgrass, and then I realize they're making a joke about people who say touchgrass What I always hear in my head on when I sound like somebody on Twitter, which I shouldn't, I hate it, but like every time you say somebody says touch grass, I hear touch cloth, which is English for beginning to shit your pants.

Oh, ooh. Isn't that a great phrase, touching cloth? I wanted to do my memoir. Oh my god, touching cloth. Turn away, turn away. If you don't don't look at me. Don't look at me. It's coming out like lava. Oh it's a Jordan Mint. You ever seen Bridesmaids? It's a very funny movie. So I like poop jokes. This is the Jordan Mint. Uh touchcloth. I am eleven years old. Uh mid journey. Wait, what am I looking up on my phone? Oh yeah, carrot. Carrot. They should have one called stick weather. Carrot? Uh he would pun, would pick a pocket. You ever seen in the movie Master and Commander? No, I haven't seen the command. It's really good. Really? Not at all. Huh? No. I it was one of those it it was like the age gap thing where it was a big deal, but I think I was too young or three.

I'm two for three on my co-hosts. Uh oh oh is Wait, wait, so Syracusa and Yeah. Ben Syracuse like me, like the first time you see Master and Commander, he said something and I was like, I know exactly what you mean, which is you think this thought that makes absolutely no fucking sense. Which is you're barely a few minutes into this movie and even though you've never seen it before, there are so many dads that will think exactly the same thing, which is hmm This movie's already underrated. I've seen ten minutes of this movie and I already know this is one of the why are we not talking about this movie? This is one of the most underrated movies of all time. Huh. Huh. Stargazing tonight, excellent conditions.

Oh fuck, man. Crazy low cloud cover. Excellent. Okay, so Wednesday night good. Thursday night. Friday night bad, Saturday bad, Sunday bad, Monday bad, Tuesday. It's gonna have to be tonight. Bump bump bump. Unless. Why do you never do the bit? Uh unless unless We don't do them all. Let's try it again. Three Two. Let's see. Wednesday good. Thursday, bad, for all god, these are all bad. The only good night is Wednesday. Unless Unless Unless I'm able to get my family to go somewhere where it's clear. Yes. Yes. And you always. Peter, Hanrahan. Peter Hanra Hanrahan. Did you speak to the did you speak to the German minister? Yes. What language did you speak to him? German? Ick. Nickten. Said he doesn't like it, but he have to go along with it.

In German. Ichten Lichten? I thought I knew this reference. Oh shit dog, are you fucking kidding me? Holy shit! Oh my god, this this just became the greatest episode we've ever done. Oh I thought it was Monty Python. What is this? Hey, could you please enter this into our common book, please, that the challenge for uh 19 and 7 is what would that be, 20? Eight? No. What's 197? 28? Next week. The challenge for next week is to please look. Yes. Now, now, okay. Normally, so often as so so we're can this be the end of the episode? Yes, yes. 'Cause I have one more thing if this is the end. One one more thing, yes. You have anything else you want to say? Hey, listen, I didn't want to make a big fucking deal about it and I'm really bad at I'm a bad friend.

I don't know how to be a friend. I didn't know what to say to you. I'm so sorry about your cat. I'm really so sorry and I I'm sorry I couldn't do more and like I'm just really I don't know how to be a friend in situations like that and I figured you were just surrounded by friends who are better at but I'm so sorry for you guys. That sweet little face. And now you're really stuck with the bad one, right? Yeah. It's real weird. Does it make you like the uh the bad cat anymore? Not really. Uh no. You know what? I think you'll convince yourself. I believe in you. You're gonna convince yourself you like that terrible fucking cat. I'll decide I we like him. Alex, I'm so sorry. We'll never speak of it again.

Oh shit, I sent you a timestamp. Oh my god, it's all so difficult. Okay, um I'm gonna ask you to get this ready, please. Mm-hmm. Okay, what we're looking at here, uh one of my absolute comedy heroes. adjacent to other comedy heroes is uh a guy named Chris Morris. And you've seen Chris Morris well, you might have seen him on the date. You've probably seen if anybody's seen Chris Morris in Normal America, it's probably also the same place they saw Matt Berry, which is on the IT crowd. He had a small role in the IT crowd. But he's best known, I think, in England for his radio shows and his TV shows. And he did uh this show that we're gonna look at in a second is called The Day Today. And it's I think a 1994-ish.

It's mid-90s send-up of news shows, but it's so fucking smart and funny. Um and just uh Brady's Bits, if y'all enjoy the um the character of uh Alan Partridge as played by Steve Coogan that originated on this show. What? What? I'm Alan Partridge. So that was like before that he'd been on, I believe he's probably most famous for being on the puppet show that was in the Genesis video. Um What was the the Well I don't know. Yeah, you do. It's the one um uh the the the I'm sorry, I can't think of it. Anyway, the point being, so he's done lots of great stuff, but this is also like the hotbed of like Armando Ianucci Like this is like if do have you ever watched any Stuart Lee at all? I don't think so.

Like maybe in past without knowing what it is. Well uh you know what? Fuck it. Never mind. We're going in cold. We're gonna do it live Uh this is a one minute and forty five second video. And so this is a show where Chris Morris is the host of this English news show. It's got a lot, it's got it all. I mean this was He has a guy that he has to deal with, one of his commentators, one of his reporters, and his name is Peter Rohan Rahan Rohan. Are you ready to g 321 go? Three. Yes. Three, two, one, go. A week of foul-tempered debate in Europe ended this afternoon as finance ministers agreed new quota rates for trade with the United States. In Brussels is our economics correspondent Peter O'Hanraha Hanrahan.

Peter, what is the new rate? It's 30%, Chris. Agreement was a long time coming, but in the end the decision was unanimous. What was the Germans' reaction? Because they've been holding out for forty percent, haven't they? That's right. Uh when I spoke to Finance Minister Reinhardt earlier today, he said he didn't like the deal, but he had to go along with it. Really? You spoke to him yourself. You managed to pin him down. He's a pretty tricky man, isn't he? That's right. Where did you get hold of him? He was in the hotel. And you conducted a conversation with him about the quota rates. That's right. He said he didn't like it, but he had to go along with it. What language did you conduct this conversation in, Peter?

German. You spoke to him about the technicalities of the deal in German. Yes. So what's the German for 30%? Trenta percenta. Yes. And what about that quote you attributed to him? I don't like it, but I'll have to go along with it. That's what he said. How did he say it? I don't like it, but I'll have to go along with it. In German, how did he say it? Ich nichtenlich. Presumably you mean rufen Sie ein Taxi bitte sonst für passiv meinem Fluch. Yes. No, you don't, Peter, because that means get me a taxi, I'm late for my plane. Now I'm going to ask you a question. Did you speak to the German finance minister about the New Deal this afternoon? No. And what was his reaction? I don't know. Thank you.

Yes. How'd you get along with it? Yes. He said he doesn't like it, but he had to go along with it. And everybody on the show writes for the show. So there was the this is the day today and he did another show called Brass Eye that's fucking amazing and his radio things are s are so fucking good. He's a genius. I I love Chris Morris very much. Thank you for watching that with me. Yeah, he's done a lot of stuff. And he's done uh wish you got a hold of to blow to get you to watch too early. But you know you're watching you're watching the thing is though you're watching Dave. And his dick sucks. Oh god, I love it so much. Yeah. The second season, the first two episodes are very upsetting. I'm not there yet.

Wow. You're way wow, you are going fast. I yeah, yeah. It's really it's really, really good. And I heard it everybody says it gets better and better, which seems unlikely, but and do you know I had to be told this by my fucking wife. Do you know A lot of it's real. Yeah. Did you know how like did you know that he was born with a tangled urethra and he does have two dick holes and the L's Does have bipolar and L's is his DJ and height. Yeah. And the only reason I actually knew who Gato was is because he has like uh sort of a little bit talked about being bipolar in his uh songs and stuff. Not that I'm a rep commercial. I love his character. He's great. God, I love his like, but it's so funny because like Um, I'm not gonna pretend that I don't think Louis C.

K. is one of the great shows, Louis C. K. 's comic I I think Louis C. K. was one of the funniest comics, and I think his show was amazing. And but when they get into the like the bipolar stuff, it goes from feeling a little bit like wonderfully, like curb your enthusiasm, to feeling a little bit like Louis. When that episode, like with him and his um his mom. The I was not prepared. Nothing. I was like, what the fuck is this show doing to me? It's I like I I remember vaguely like being in the orbit of like, oh yeah, there's this guy and like ah he did like this thing with the viral video and he's got a twisted urethra. He's But his own. It's like the skin from his balls, his whole dick is that.

It's ribbed. It's like his whole penis is made of balls. That's a hell of a cold. Somebody suck me No! I love when he shows up when he walks into that room in the library when Mike says to the guy, you know, I love, oh god, how much do you love Mike? Mike helps him with his back. Oh he's so funny. His his bath oh my god the bath and taking notes. I love every single inch of that I love his girlfriend. The girlfriend is so such a perfect like T V girlfriend of the Platinum Age of TV. She's so perfect. Oh my god, the play. Don't flush too much. Don't flush too much. Don't flush too much Wait, what's the thing? Remember when we were doing the school play? And little boy comes out dressed as a toilet and he goes, Don't flush too much, don't flush too much, don't flush too much You are in for a fucking roller coaster ride.

Well that's the whole that's what interested me. But the uh what was the other thing then? Um Louis C. K. was very funny My God, when Chelsea Paretti jumps into the helicopter and flips in the bird and the helicopter takes off, oh my god. It's the most Woody Allen moment on TV. So good. Never thought I got a copy of side effects right here. You gonna read side effects and tell me it's not funny? You gonna tell me that? You can tell me the shit that he wrote in the you can tell me that? You can tell me that? You can tell me that? You can the stuff he wrote in the 70s in New New York, it's not funny. Madame Bovary? I don't think I've got to be. co. uk. Have you ever read The Lottery Marlin Man?

I don't think I have. But I have to say, I know it's already a TV show on Amazon, but we have always lived in the castle. Does sound like the name of a shitty Apple TV Plus show. raw transcript