Jeff and Brett are joined by Merlin Mann, who brings his usual blend of humor and chaos, including witty takes on knife-brandishing, app issues, and nostalgic TV shows. They discuss everything from kids growing up to intense medical appointments. The trio dives into language usage pet peeves and the weird world of higher education, touching on family, technology, and just how much they can all survive. Entertaining and, as always overtired.

Shopify is the commerce platform behind 10% of all eCommerce in the US, from household names like Mattel and Gymshark, to brands just getting started. Get started today at shopify.com/overtired.

Show Links

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:30 Technical Difficulties and Knife Jokes
01:54 Music and TV Show Discussions
06:48 Health Issues and Personal Stories
21:51 Disability and Aging Reflections
30:18 Ian Mackaye and Punk Stories
32:42 Ian McKay’s Hilarious SUV Game
33:31 Cross Country Team Shenanigans
34:30 Discussing Music Preferences
38:26 Shopify Sponsorship Segment
41:03 College Life Challenges
53:20 The Wisdom Project and Life Advice
01:06:18 Guitar Moves with Matt Sweeney
01:08:06 Ace Frehley and KISS Trivia
01:09:03 Tom Snyder Interviews and Iggy Pop
01:09:32 Wendy O. Williams and Milwaukee Riot
01:11:20 Taskmaster and Playlists
01:20:03 Grammar and Usage Pet Peeves
01:30:47 Derry Girls and TV Recommendations
01:36:21 Concluding Thoughts and Sign-Off

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Check out more episodes at overtiredpod.com and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Find Brett as @ttscoff, Christina as @film_girl, Jeff as @jsguntzel, and follow Overtired at @ovrtrd on Twitter.

Transcript

Chekovâ€™s Roast

Introduction and Guest Welcome

Jeff: [00:00:00] is the Overtired podcast. I am Jeff Severance. Gunzel. Uh, we have Brett Terpstra. Christina is not here this week, and we have a very special guest who’s brandishing a knife? Merlin Mann. Welcome Merlin Mann.

Merlin: Brandish. Hi guys. Thanks for having me.

Jeff: You’re welcome.

Merlin: Nice to be here.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Merlin: Oh, sorry. Should I be funnier? Should I be funnier? Oh, I’m sorry.

Jeff: Dance monkey?

Merlin: Let’s see.

Technical Difficulties and Knife Jokes

Merlin: It’s, uh, 22 minutes after D Oh, last 50 minutes trying to get connected to your cockamamie series of apps. And now I’m the weird guy

playing with a knife. F am I

Jeff: Fucking weirdo.

Merlin: Oh, hey. Hey guys.

Thanks. I, I, I’m gonna figure out what, what I, what I’ve done to Christine someday. I’m not sure I wanna know at this point, but

I don’t know why I

Brett: miss your last one too?

Merlin: I think I’ve talked to Christine twice in the last

Brett: We, we call you, we call you when Christina can’t make it. ’cause you,

Merlin: make sure you call her Christina. I, I You called her Christine earlier. [00:01:00] No, I, I, I, I misspoke.

Brett: you’re, you’re, you’re like the perfect fill for Christina. You, you both can opine about, just about any topic.

Merlin: Mm-hmm.

Brett: Elaborate.

Merlin: I

just, I wanna be

Jeff: or elaborate?

Brett: Yes.

Merlin: I want to be supportive to whatever it is that you guys want to do. ’cause you both seem a little bit, now the, the listener cannot see, they’ve, oh, by the way, we’re, I, I can see you guys and myself on video, which I did not know at 10 0 6 this morning. Um, I wanna be supportive ’cause you guys both look like you’re physically and emotionally falling apart.

Since

I got on this call with your cockamamie app, did you know there’s a separate cockamamie app, uh, you could also use instead of Chrome or Vivaldi?

Then it wouldn’t let me, it said there all because I got the sparkle update on that and that had an error. So I went back to Vivaldi. Steven, I know you’ll listen and you’re gonna hear me bitching about the goddamn app.

Hey guys.

Music and TV Show Discussions

Jeff: Have you ever listened to the, to the Max Richter, uh, recomposed of the Four Seasons?

Merlin: Yeah, it’s [00:02:00] really pretty. I do, I do. I like it a lot. I think it’s, I think it’s really pretty and I like the way that it, like hints at elements that you’ll like, even if you aren’t, don’t know if, if you don’t think you’re familiar with the Four Seasons or you might be a little familiar with the Four Seasons, like you’ve heard it having brunch

when you used to have money, that kind of thing.

Uh, the way that it just kind of weaves in and out. I think it’s really pretty. I think he’s a very interesting

person.

Jeff: is very interesting.

Merlin: were watching, uh, the Leftovers, which is a big rewatch for my wife and me in a first time for my lackadaisical team. And every time that gorgeous theme comes on, he, he doesn’t even look up from his phone.

He goes, get another theme.

Jeff: that’s a

Merlin: Because as of yesterday, my child is 18 years of age.

Brett: my, so.

Jeff: as Wait, what? As of yesterday, my son is 17.

Merlin: 10,

Jeff: no, as of Saturday, as of yesterday, my brother is 55.

Merlin: I do that,

I do that.

Brett: my partner’s dad has been dead for

Jeff: we cheese.

Brett: Um,

Merlin: No shit. As [00:03:00] of October, uh, as of, wait a minute, as of two days from now on, my father will have been dead for 51 years. So that’s a feather in your

cap.

Brett: You guys have, you, you guys have paternal death day anniversaries near each other. I should

Merlin: Title

Brett: Um,

Jeff: Paternal death days.

Brett: um,

Merlin: Death Day is the worst. Tom Cruise movie.

Brett: I’m a big, I’m a big fan of audio design in, um, TV shows and when it’s done well, it’s amazing. And the, the thing that’s. That really got me going right now is the, like intro song for interview with the vampire. The, the song is so discordant.

It makes you feel like

vomiting.

Jeff: huh?

Brett: crazy.

Merlin: It’s so what?

Brett: So discordant, it makes you feel like vomiting. It’s just this five seconds of like, like every instrument in the orchestra [00:04:00] being tuned simultaneously.

Merlin: Ooh.

Brett: Yeah. It’s wild.

Merlin: Do you think it’s effective? Is it,

is it

Brett: sets the stage.

Merlin: I filled that with Christopher, uh, Nolan.

Brett: Yeah.

Merlin: Like he’s, he said, or, you know, like the Johnny Greenwood soundtrack and that, uh, Winick Oil movie,

the PSH movie. Um, Johnny, uh, uh, no Country for Old Oil cans.

Uh, there will be

Blood. There will be Blood.

It’s got that, that could be John Green Johnny Greenwood soundtrack. You think it’s effective though?

It,

Brett: Oh my God.

Merlin: yeah. I, it’s, um, I remember this is a phenomenon. I remember first noticing, and I, every time I say this, I feel like I, I sound like I’m trying to be fancy and I’m not, but like, I, I like everybody, you know, I grew up watching tv.

I watched, I loved Law and Order in the nineties. I would watch it all day on a and e while I was making web pages, but after I watched The Wire. After I had like, uh, shotgunned a lot of the wire, it became more and more difficult to go back to regular procedurals with the same frame of mind. Now if you’re folding [00:05:00] laundry or you’re in a hotel room or whatever, you can always get back in that frame of mind.

But for me, that’s like task Master and Survivor right now where I watch so much Task Master that Survivor, where the challenges have been getting less important over time and it’s really more about the drama. But you know how it is. Do you know what I’m talking about though? You get into something and then other stuff starts to feel like kind of a pale

Jeff: Well, Deadwood and other westerns with a couple of exceptions.

Merlin: deadwood’s pretty spec, especially those first

three episodes.

Jeff: oh

Brett: see Wayward?

Jeff: No,

Merlin: No. Is it good?

Brett: It’s so good. That was, that one made all other shows pale for me for the three days it took us to binge

Merlin: Netflix? I feel like it’s been, oh wait, is it with, uh, is it with Tony Colette? No.

Who’s in

Brett: May. It’s May. What’s her name from the handsome podcast? What’s their name? Um,

Merlin: Oh, Mae Martin.

Brett: Yeah.

Merlin: Who was also on taskmaster. She, they, God, my, so I, I think I knew of Mae Martin when they were less commonly known as they, and now [00:06:00] my wife keeps correcting me. Yes. Uh, I could not get with that. I could not get with the dialogue. There’s a lot of, as you know, Bob, but my wife loved it.

Brett: I loved it.

Merlin: Well, as you know, we’re in a relationship and this is the house that we’re going to be

Jeff: What about complimentary shows? Right now my wife and I are watching Slow Horses and the Diplomat at the same time,

Merlin: Oh man. That Hal is a stinker.

What are we gonna do with Hal Brett? Do you watch a lot of tv?

Brett: do,

Merlin: Yeah.

Um, Hal’s a Stinker. I love that show. Did you know the

Jeff: are you watching the current season because

you meet Todd. Todd,

Merlin: is that, is that the, the, the.

Jeff: the first man

Merlin: I love, I love Todd. And when he bleeds on the oysters, it really

Jeff: Amazing. Brett, you

Merlin: Anyway.

Health Issues and Personal Stories

Merlin: Hey everybody, it’s Overtired and Christina, ie. Is not here.

Brett: should we do a, should we do a quick check-in? We don’t have to spend a whole episode on it. It tends to bleed over either [00:07:00] way.

Merlin: made a Hitler mustache outta

my

Jeff: that. Don’t do it.

Merlin: Isn’t that kind of funny?

This is my last territorial demand.

Jeff: did that for a minute.

Merlin: Ann Ecstasy, Dayton land.

Brett: to that end, I will just say I’ve been up since 2:00 AM I

Jeff: is what your head sounds like.

Brett: I have added time tracking and plugin architecture to my NA project and set up

Merlin: Not applicable project.

Brett: next action project, um, and, and have also spun up a server to handle payment processing for Mark three all in the last 48 hours

Merlin: Mark three super recent? Is it super

recent

Brett: not out yet.

Merlin: I, okay,

Jeff: It’s

Brett: coming In the next couple weeks, the beta will be out,

Merlin: well ask me why. I know. I’ll tell you why. Because I wanted to go do something with Mark and I couldn’t figure it out and I was trying to change something [00:08:00] and um, and then I was searching around and then I did a search and I searched on marked, and then I saw Mark three and I went there and I kept clicking on stuff and it didn’t go

Brett: I know, I I, put that,

Jeff: did that same thing.

Brett: I

Merlin: Also, you still can’t hide style sheets. You don’t wanna see

Brett: I put that website up. You, you just remove them. It’s in preferences.

Merlin: Amblin

Brett: oh, you can’t, you can’t remove the default

Merlin: Oh, are those style sheets? Did I get that wrong?

Brett: They’re styles. Um,

Merlin: What if I wanted my numbered ones to go to the ones that I want instead of having to use the extra medic key?

Brett: um,

Jeff: Mm, feedback.

Brett: I will, I will take that under

Merlin: I am Brett. I don’t sleep. Meet mo. Meet mo.

Brett: I put that website up, um, as a placeholder while

Merlin: They gobble it up fast, don’t they?

Brett: and I, I, uh, I put, I put no index on it and it still got picked up by all the search engines.

Merlin: Oh, that’s such a bummer. Oh, that sucks.

Brett: I either I can just take it down, but it’s [00:09:00] so

Merlin: No, it looks pretty. I’m looking forward to it. Sign me up, man. I’m ready.

Jeff: I’m excited.

Merlin: Is set up. Okay. Am I okay to use set up?

Brett: Oh yeah.

Merlin: I’m gonna say this in a way that I, I normally don’t, ’cause I actually really usually don’t care. You’re, you’re a grown man. You can decide what programs you want to be in.

Am I, I’m not harming developers, but you.

Am I harming? Am

Jeff: great, Brett has a great, take on this. I asked him early on.

Brett: half my income comes from set and it’s sustained repeatable income that like I didn’t have to put out of subscription based

Merlin: Is it based on seats? Is it based on number of installations?

Brett: It’s based on usage.

Jeff: It’s based on how long it’s

Brett: every, every time you, every time you open the app, the developer gets a little bit. Um, and then for apps like say default folder X that are always running, um, it, it, it has different, um, calculations

Merlin: to feel bad about using

Brett: No, no,

Jeff: I just opened, I just opened, marked. Did you get a [00:10:00] little cha-ching sound in there?

Merlin: got, he has a bespoke separate stream deck that just lets him know when he needs Six Sense.

It’s called, it’s called the Spotify plugin.

Brett: See the new stream deck software?

Jeff: No, sir.

Merlin: Stream deck software where you can’t quit it with, you can’t get it out of the forward facing app without quitting the whole fucking app, that app.

Jeff: Ooh.

Merlin: Okay. No, I

Brett: they just released an 800 megabyte update that adds a whole bunch of stuff, including a virtual stream deck. And, um, you can now apply single double and Long press taps to every button on your

Merlin: Really? Oh

my

Jeff: like, no matter how old your stream deck,

Brett: Yeah.

Jeff: Hmm,

Merlin: on 7 0 3.

Checking for updates. All right, well I’m gonna check that out. Thank you, Brett. I’m gonna write that down.

You have my

Brett: for my check-in.

Merlin: Goodnight everybody. Da.

Brett: Thank

Jeff: Your check-in has been up since two and, uh, getting shit done

Brett: Oh, I should mention, um, I found a new [00:11:00] doctor that is a specialist in POTS and EDS and dismia and,

Jeff: in Winona,

Brett: yeah. Um, lives in lacrosse. Practices in lacrosse, but comes to Winona, like on Thursdays

and

Jeff: Lacrosse is Wisconsin

Merlin: post organizational tit syndrome.

Brett: Yes. Um, the.

Jeff: they used to call it that.

Brett: Lacrosse is known as the drunkest city in the u in the us but, uh, pots is post postural ortho something, tachycardia syndrome

but um,

Jeff: Is it like a purely POTS doctor?

Brett: um, her specialty, she’s, she’s an np

Merlin: it on the sign. Purely

Brett: and her specialty is pots above all else, but she is very well versed in all autonomic function disorders. Um, so she ordered like [00:12:00] 15 vials of blood,

Merlin: What? That’s a lot of blood.

Brett: I have never had a problem having blood drawn before. I have no fear

Jeff: But 15 vials was a

Brett: don’t

Merlin: When I was in the hospital, I don’t think I ever

Brett: I passed out. It’s the first time I’ve

ever

Merlin: From not enough

Brett: out from blood.

Merlin: So like that’s like more than giving

Jeff: I think they call

Brett: I don’t, I don’t know if that’s true and I don’t know if I might have just had some kind of vagus nerve reaction to you

Merlin: I gotta learn more

Brett: 10. I passed out after 10 vials, and

Merlin: Oh no, Brett. Well that must have made it easier to get the rest.

Brett: well they said, I, when I came to and I was like cracking jokes with the, with the people there.

They’re like, oh, we can just, you know, take the 10 vials we have and spread them out across 15. I’m like, what?

Merlin: just basic science. Why did he do it with three?

Brett: but they also had me do

Merlin: You sure you went to regular science doctor school?

Jeff: a what? A what Table test.

Brett: A tilt [00:13:00] table test. They like, they lay you on a table, they for like 10 minutes and they take your blood pressure every minute and then the table tilts up to 70 degrees and you have to stand there for 15 minutes at 70 degrees while they take your blood

Jeff: Wait, stand. Stand on the table. You’re standing on the table.

Brett: the table tilts.

Merlin: Okay, so, so, so my hand, my hand, is, that’s 90. And so then it goes like this. So you’re at a slight. Okay.

And so is it, is it sort of like how some people pass out because they stood up too fast?

It’s a way to

Brett: That’s what, that’s what pots. Is. Pots. Pots is

Merlin: Oh, so it’s not your, it’s not your all, it’s not your fucked up brain. It’s your

body. Oh shit, I didn’t

Brett: And cause I started passing out, I would stand up and I would just pass out. Um, and that’s pots. So the tilt table was supposed to help determine what kind of pots I have.

I passed, I, I, the tilt table test revealed nothing. [00:14:00] So the fact is I do pass out. The fact is, every time I stand up, I get dizzy and have to sit back down. But the tilt table said I, I was normal. So now we have to figure out what all that means. I have another appointment with my doctor in a week.

Jeff: Tilt table test. It looks, I mean, it literally looks like Frankenstein,

Brett: Yeah,

Merlin: it,

is it, but

Jeff: that Frankenstein’s the

Merlin: in a fairly short period of time, you realized that

you would get like, what do they call it? Syncope. Like you would get dizzy and then sometimes pa you would, would you actually pass like loose consciousness?

Brett: I have passed out five times. I’ve gone to full unconsciousness, but,

Merlin: You know who hates that? Is the people who are in the room with you when that

Brett: Yeah, they

Jeff: like your, like your male person.

Merlin: Yeah.

Or your female

Jeff: no, is, this is a good story.

Brett: I went to the door. My, the, the male person rang the doorbell and I went to the door to answer it, and I opened

the door and she hands me the packages and I faint. [00:15:00] she, she’s, she’s about a foot shorter than me, but she

Merlin: Just seeing Lucille on Arrested Development, he just keep passing out.

Brett: she, she shoulders me into the

Merlin: no,

Brett: and lowers me with her shoulder. And then I woke up on the floor. But she had prevented me from like, crashing my head or anything.

Um, it was, Um, it was, some fast, right,

Merlin: that’s so

cool.

Jeff: crazy.

Brett: heroes of the US Mail Service. Um, but yeah, like I was passing out all the time kind of, and then.

I got way better at recognizing when it was going to happen. So I would just immediately sit back down or take a knee,

Merlin: Be because of, because of how you felt or because of conditions.

Brett: Um, I it, you know, I’m sure you’ve gotten lightheaded when you

Merlin: Oh, no, no, no. I, no, I’m, I’m just, I mean, like, ’cause I’ve, I’ve wondered about stuff like this too, where like, you know, one thing I, this is not a joke. Like, I’m 50 something, I’m [00:16:00] 58, I’ll be 59 next month. And like, I really, I do worry about like, my eyesight’s not as good and I worry about falling down, tripping on things.

And I don’t wanna be like a kook about it or make my family put me in. They’ll never put me in a home. They’ll just drive me to the emergency room, cut the tags outta my clothes, probably. But it’s your problem now. Hong Kong off to college. But, um, but, but no, I, I, I worry about that stuff too. So I guess I just mean like, ’cause like the thing is when you go out, it happens so fast.

You do, you get tunnel vision first.

Yeah,

Okay.

Brett: it, but

Merlin: I hate that feeling. I hate that feeling

Brett: I go from like woozy to tunnel vision to passed out in about six seconds.

Merlin: Well, the way I would put that is I go, you what’s happened to me? I ha that has happened to me a few times. Mostly when I’ve had way too much weed. Um, but you go from, everything’s fine to, this is weird to a woman is screaming in your face that, should I call 9 1 1 is the way that it feels, which is, it feels like the same way, that it’s not very fair to blame me for snoring.

If I’m

asleep and I don’t know I’m doing it. I didn’t

[00:17:00] know I was gonna pass out.

Brett: I never pass out for more than a few seconds. But when I come to you, I’ve had entire dreams,

like in those few seconds, like, I don’t know if my brain like backfills subconscious thoughts or what, but I’ll come to, and I’ll feel like I just had a good dream and it, well, I’ll be like, how long was I out?

Was that like half an hour? And be like, no, you literally just fell out and then woke up.

Jeff: wow. When I

Merlin: how, I wonder if that’s what it’s like to die. Wouldn’t it be amazing if it was that easy? It’d

Jeff: When I was 18, I stood up too fast. I passed out and I woke up in a ball saying the name Michael Jackson.

Brett: Huh? How much, how, how, how, how many drugs were involved with

Jeff: Zero Jo. I didn’t, I I’ve, I’ve

Merlin: He was very popular. Brett, he was on the radio all the time, always on the radio.

Jeff: Always on the radio. Yeah. Oh, Michael Jackson. Totally. And then I had MTV, he was on that.

Merlin: Oh yeah. He was, and he actually, he at one point apologized to Darrel Hall for the extent to which he lifted [00:18:00] parts of what became Billy Jean

Jeff: But he was only on MTV, uh, as part of a package deal with Rocket by Quincy Jones.

Merlin: Rocket

Jeff: weren’t putting black artists on. And so

the record label was like, you’re putting rocket on,

Merlin: But then Darryl Hall said, I forgive you. We all do it. But think, think about that Billie Jean. Think about how much it sounds like, um,

Jeff: Oh

Merlin: I can’t go for that.

No, can

Jeff: true. That’s true. I assume there’s a mashup

Merlin: I’m sorry, Brett. That must, that sounds stressful. That’s, that’s really stressful.

Brett: Yeah. It’s been a rough year and a half now.

Jeff: Is it, is it like basically stabilized or is it you, have you learned just to be careful?

Brett: I, I’ve learned to be careful. I’ve learned like the treatment, the drug they treat pots with is Vyvanse, which I already take, so that

worked out well.

Merlin: I wish it did anything.

Brett: the other,

Merlin: I had one an hour ago. I’m still

apparently

Brett: the other treatment is to drink two to three liters of water with five grams of salt a day. [00:19:00] Um, so I

Jeff: much is five grams of salt,

Brett: It’s, it weighs about five grams.

Um,

Jeff: That doesn’t help me.

Brett: uh, you know, those liquid IVs,

those little packets of

Jeff: oh, yeah, yeah.

Brett: those are 500 milligrams.

Jeff: Got it. Okay. Thank you. That’s all I

Merlin: this is the beauty of

metric is ’cause they all, they’re all kind of the same

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Brett: so

Merlin: the weights, and the volumes. It makes a lot more sense.

Jeff: I’m into it. I’m just not gonna learn it. Sorry, go

Brett: element spelled LMNT, and that is one gram of salt per little packet. So I really, I just drink five of those a day.

Jeff: okay. Got it.

Merlin: Oh, I

see, I see, I

Jeff: makes sense. And that helps.

Brett: Yeah,

Merlin: The additional salt,

Brett: yeah. It, it, so I don’t understand what this means.

Merlin: controlled for a typical blood pre. I see. I don’t know a ton about this, but I’ve got high, I’ve got high

Brett: the thing is the salt doesn’t change my blood pressure. If

anything, [00:20:00] my blood pressure has gone down significantly since I started doing the salt. Um, but what it does supposedly is increase your blood volume. And I don’t know what that means or how it works, but by increasing your blood volume, it means your legs have to work less to pump blood to your brain when you stand up.

So. You’re basically just keeping your, it’s not blood

Merlin: Or if it’s making more of it or make no, yeah, no, it’s, it’s really confusing. ’cause like if you, if you stop to think about everybody, you, we use these words all the time, but if you were to like pop quiz somebody on the subway and go, well, like, tell me about the difference between heart rate and blood pressure and all these things.

It’s, you get a little confused. But blood volume, it’s, that’s, I mean, volume is what it says on the tin. It’s either getting more, it’s either more of it or it’s more like, sort of dense. You’re topping it off, you’re topping off your leg tank.

Brett: I guess Yeah. But it works. It helps.

Jeff: Hmm.

Merlin: Uh, I’m sorry [00:21:00] man.

Jeff: Yeah.

Merlin: You don’t need one more thing. Nobody needs one more

Jeff: Nobody needs one more thing.

Brett: But it, so insomnia is apparently a symptom of justia too.

Merlin: yeah, no, I mean, you, you, you having insomnia, you having sleeping problems. That’s odd. You should get a podcast.

Jeff: You should,

Brett: All right.

Jeff: man. Wow. It’s fucking crazy. Weren’t you scooting down the stairs on your butt for a while? ’cause you were afraid of passing

Brett: Yeah. Well, I had to crawl

Merlin: What can a man just Scoot Scoot down the stairs on his butt? ’cause it’s fun. Why do we need a reason for everything?

Brett: I had to crawl from the couch to my bed on multiple occasions because I couldn’t stand up for even five seconds.

Merlin: Oh my gosh. Oh, that is, that must have felt in the moment. So, panicky, scary.

Brett: Panicky. Scary.

Disability and Aging Reflections

Brett: And also, like, I don’t like the feeling of being disabled. And what I’ve been dealing with for the last year and a half is [00:22:00] coming to accept that I am now disabled, um, between like multiple bouts of extremely rapid weight gain and my back going out

Merlin: Oh my gosh,

Brett: pots and. And all of the things that have kind of, uh, floor, uh, like knocked me out of everyday life.

Um, and I, in my head I’m like, I’ll, I’ll just, I’ll get healthy again and everything will be fine. And I’m coming to realize

Merlin: that’s a young man’s

conjecture really. It really, no, no. I mean it’s, it’s super duper is, and it’s why it kind of bums me out that, that we look at disabled, that word as a binary and it’s, it bums me out. And not in the typical like boo don’t be ableist way, but in honestly practical way of like, well, sometimes you know what, even a little kid isn’t feeling as good today as another day, and some kids are better at climbing a rope and some kids can hold their pee and some kids can’t.

And like [00:23:00] through your entire life you encounter all this stuff. And if there’s anything that fucks us up, in my opinion. This is not a criticism of people who are young or of the concept of youth because I did the same thing. But you don’t understand that youth is the anomaly. Youth is the temporary condition you have.

Absolutely. You have absolutely no way of knowing. So if, so, I’m sorry. Let me take a step back and I, I promise I’m trying to be supportive here, Brett. This, I’m not trying to like hijack your topic, but it’s frustrating to me when people act like, uh, we could call it aging. You know what I would call it, I would call it still being alive.

Jeff: Uhhuh.

Merlin: Still being alive. I mean, it, it is anomalous in the sense that most people who’ve lived are dead. But that’s why you fucking people should be really happy to be alive and seek out things that make you feel better about life rather than things that make you feel, ugh.

Fucking people. With that said, um, the. The anomaly is the youth part. And you would have no way to know that ’cause you’ve never been anything but young. And so Brett, if I could say like, I used to [00:24:00] talk, I used to say like, I always used to feel more like Spider-Man or Wolverine, where I had this healing factor where like, I could drink coffee at 11 and be up at 5:00 AM or you know, whatever.

I could always bounce back. My bounce backs were really, really quick. And, um, because that’s what it is to be young. Really that’s not any special trick. I mean, that’s like, think it’s, it is a superpower to be able to reach things on a shelf. And you’re like, well, yeah, well that person’s six four. That’s why they can do that.

That’s what’s called what’s called being taller. That’s what height is. In that case though, what you can’t realize and won’t realize, and don’t worry, you’re, you’re gonna learn all this later, people, you don’t need to listen to me and you auten listen to me. Later on, you will learn. Youth is the anomaly.

And people like me and Brett and probably to some extent Jeff, go like, oh, I just need to get back to how it was. I just need to get back to this homeostatic state where I heal, where I heal, like I’m a 19-year-old man. And like, I don’t think that’s wholesome, but I do think it’s normal and I think it’s a bummer that it’s normal because the reason that it’s normal is ’cause that’s how we talk to each other.

And Dan Benjamin used to like have a lot of fun with talking about how old I am. And I’m like, well, you know, I wish my dad had gotten [00:25:00] older. I would’ve really liked that. I would love to see my dad be old and have so I could make fun of him. But he didn’t. He died when he was 45. And that really sucks. And we, I think we ought to be light in, in how we treat this stuff.

Because first of all, any, everybody’s got a quote disability. What a dumb fucking word. I mean, you know, I, I use, you know why I use the ramp at our library? I use the ramp at our library ’cause I’m lazy. I use the ramp at our library because I’m on a scooter. I’ve only ever, I think, used the ramp at our library because of infirmity, maybe once or twice ’cause of my gout or some old man disease.

But you know, like where I’ve got, like had my knee hurt or something. But the, the ramp helps everybody. The ramp harms no one. And to look at as a conveyance or an affordance for people who had this sin or bad taste to age and not be young and perfect anymore is very silly. And I know, I, I realize how this sounds.

I realize the, the, the, the, the dozens of theoretically pairs of deaf ears, this will fall upon. [00:26:00] But that’s why Brett, I think that’s what don’t you feel, find yourself feeling sort of like chastened and you’re like, my wife is still like this ’cause she’s an athlete. And I’m like, honey, we’re all getting like, it’s okay.

For things to slow down. It’s okay for things to break and remember, the grade that you get is not like how good your corpse was, but how you handled it while the corpse was still anate and like we make, I think we need to lift people up in that, trying to keep their corpse alive. Business. I lift you up.

I do it, Brad. I don’t, I don’t care. I don’t fucking care. That’s a lot to, that’s a lot to you. You’re hit getting hit on all angles.

Brett: side story. Uh, right before I logged into our, um, problematic app here, i, I, I have a special email folder that. me, um, emails that I need to reply to, and then once I reply to them, they disappear. And there was an email in there and I read it before I realized somehow an email had surfaced from 2014.

And it [00:27:00] was my kind of breakup email with Dan Benjamin when I left Five by Five.

Merlin: Oh, wow.

Brett: it was, it was quite a jolt to like be back in that kind of,

Merlin: Isn’t it? It’s so weird to get parachuted, but, but, also, it’s also the other thing with old meme emails. ’cause I run into this looking for old photos or old emails all the time where I’ll be like, oh, like there’s so little context to, to like what you’re like, you’ve gotta like kind of go back and up and down and forward and look through the history.

’cause you’ll, that isn’t that part of what’s jarring is you’re like, whoa, you wanna almost say, oh that escalated quickly. But like, you’re like, no, I, I actually escalated a normal amount over time and I just didn’t have the context. Nah, you should have warned me. I was gonna see this again. Also, also Brett, uh, fight, fight, flight, freeze, you know, um, there are people like John Cusso, whom, whom I love, who insists it’s always been fight, flight, freeze in his life.

And he is always heard that and I’m like, what the fuck are you talking about? I never heard freeze until like five years ago.

I

never, I always heard fight or flight. It’s a fight or flight. That’s, that’s all I ever heard.

Brett: I first [00:28:00] heard freeze maybe, maybe five

Jeff: yeah. Yeah. Body,

Merlin: My boy Bessel body keeps the score. And, but like if you’re, and I, I, gosh, I, I, I, I’m on, this is not a bit, this is not a bit about, you know, trigger warnings or content warnings, but, you know, if you had something physically traumatic happen to you that involved being held down or not being allowed to leave someplace, if you’ve ever been like, you know, uh, my, my roommate locked me in a locker at military school one time as a haha joke,

and there’s no amount of time when you’re locked into a children’s small clothing locker that it’s fun for the person on the inside.

It isn’t like you, gosh, I, I, it’s like, I wonder if in some lizard brain way, that is also part of it is like, I don’t want to be frozen here. Like, I, I have to, I have to get, I have to get to bed or get to the bathroom. You know? And that’s the other thing with crawling around in a situation like you’re describing is like, you might have urgency to go to the bathroom or you might be disoriented or whatever, but you gotta get there.

And like, now these two things are at war. And like, the last thing [00:29:00] I want to do is be frozen under a priest again.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Merlin: I took it a different direction at the

end.

Jeff: But the freeze is so huge because by not knowing

about it and not being common, you, you miss a whole

Merlin: And if you’ve got a DD, does

it not make sense how much freeze shit makes total sense in A DHD? Not the people who’ve heard of A DHD, but the people who have a DHD. And doesn’t that seem oddly close to procrastination in

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Merlin: What’s your problem, Jeff?

Jeff: I

dunno.

Merlin: guys are, you

guys are falling apart. You gotta get off these

apps. These apps. are killing you. You gotta get a normal fucking app. Can Christina get you hooked up with some kind of like, uh, some kind of like enterprise app?

Brett: probably

Merlin: I don’t remember who she works for, but like I can, can you get onto some kind of like, uh, like, I don’t know, a spec special team mojo for the enterprise?

Jeff: Hmm. Take the vowels out [00:30:00] and you’ve got an app.

Brett: she works for the company that made the place, you’re getting her show notes right now.

Merlin: Oh, I thought she worked at Microsoft. Didn’t she work at Microsoft?

Brett: She left.

Merlin: Microsoft.

Jeff: Hmm. Okay.

Merlin: Why am why am I talking like this? Y’all, y’all can’t see me? I’m talking my mouth. Oh, she got a better deal. I, I’d leave for a better deal.

Ian Mackaye and Punk Stories

Jeff: I gotta tell you guys something. This has nothing to do with anything except for

Merlin: You forgot. You forgot to hit record.

Brett: Oh shoot.

Jeff: this is super random, but I, I want to, I wanna put it in here. So, my son, who’s just turned 17, was doing a, an English class. You had to do an analysis of song lyrics, and he chose Smallpox Champion by Fugazi off the Great album in on the kill taker.

And, and he needed to just fact check that Gee Pto, who, who sings the song, had written the lyrics. So he writes to Discord records and, and asks if he could get a question to Mr. Mackay.

Two hours later, Ian Mackay writes him back on his school email account to be like, oh, yeah, that was, that was, gee, that wrote [00:31:00] that.

That was Gee, that wrote that. Yours, Ian?

Brett: Nice.

Merlin: Someday I’m gonna hear a story about this guy that makes you think he’s a real piece of shit.

Every, every single thing I’ve ever heard about this guy is, he sounds like he is a busy grownup, but he’s pretty fun. How cool. Your was your kid freaking out? Yeah. But you were freaking

Jeff: he was like, what the

Merlin: Do you know who that is?

Jeff: and I was like, you know, when I was a kid, people would write him with just issues they had or, or worries, and he would write them back. He would always write them back. And if it was two months late, he would apologize and say he was on tour. I have, I have a few friends that have these letters from him.

He would just write back and so it’s a lot easier with email, but fuck sake, he didn’t have to respond. Right.

Merlin: that’s so

Brett: photos of Ian Mackay and um, Henry Rollins at the

Jeff: At the, at the Haagen-Dazs. Yeah.

Merlin: it’s in, you know what? I can tell you exactly what it’s in, it’s in that,

Brett: Get in the van.

Merlin: no, no. The, uh, the, the, the, oh God damnit, uh, 81 82, the, the band whose, uh, [00:32:00] tour went really bad, different state of mind, uh,

movie’s

Jeff: another state of mind.

Merlin: Another State of Mind by the band is not my favorite band.

Jeff: What is the band?

Merlin: You know, the band.

But

Jeff: the cover

Merlin: everything fell apart. The everybody like flew the, their parents flew them

home from the tour. And Mike, Mike, what’s his name? Mike What’s his name, is like the only guy still, I think they go to Haagen Doss and it’s Henry Rollins. And if memory serve, it’s Henry Rollins and, and McKay in Hagen Dos, I might, this might be a fantasy or fan fiction.

I’m pretty sure it’s them at Ho and Dos where Amika worked and I think can, yeah.

Jeff: So here’s a way that Ian McKay ruined me. I had to interview him for Punk Planet and, and he was, um, it was really fun to interview him, but like he was kind of all over the place.

Ian McKay’s Hilarious SUV Game

Jeff: And I realized that those interviews with him are really edited and he was great, but he was fucking all over the place, which I loved.

But at one point he did the most UN Ian McKay thing and it has ruined me forever. ’cause I can’t not do this when I’m driving. He is like, Hey, you know what’s funny? I wish I had a recording of this because I don’t know how the fuck it came up. He’s like, you look at an SUV, we do this [00:33:00] on tour. He is like, you see an escapade?

Yeah. The word anal, anal escapade. You see an explorer, anal explorer, he see an avalanche anal avalanche. And I

Merlin: pretty, it’s pretty funny. That is

Jeff: happening right now? And so, for the rest of my life, that’s what I do. And now you will too.

Merlin: I will too. I, I add prescription to a lot of things.

Um, yeah. Try adding prescription to any, uh, especially plural. Noun.

Jeff: Oh, that’s

Merlin: Ooh, prescription Escalade. That must have been

Jeff: prescription Escalade. Yeah. Yeah.

Cross Country Team Shenanigans

Merlin: Here’s my kid. Yesterday, it was also senior day. He’s the captain of the cross country team, and

Jeff: my kids are cross country runners. What a

sweet. We just hosted the

Merlin: Oh my god, these kids are so fun. These kids. It’s like, well, you’ll see from the photo it is a lot like the bad news. Bears, uh, meets rain, man. It’s, it’s a

Jeff: We had a

Merlin: it’s a very

Jeff: team over for, for dinner. It was like 70 of ’em, and one of them was shotgunning. A LaCroix. Just like the most cross country thing ever.

Merlin: like with the pen.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. I [00:34:00] did the whole thing.

Merlin: Ooh, LaCroix, by the way, the flattest of the busy waters.

Jeff: The flattest. All right, I’m looking at this, this image. Oh, sweet.

Merlin: Look, they made, they made these, they might be giant style masks.

Um, isn’t that cute? You,

Brett: I was in track in high school, but they made us

Jeff: Go, Billy,

Brett: country team

and I one i 100% did not sign up to run cross country. I don’t understand how

Merlin: you gotta go up hills a little bit in those.

Jeff: now and again,

Merlin: Oh man. Oh, here’s them singing ’em. Happy birthday. Okay.

Discussing Music Preferences

Merlin: Anyway, um, Hey everybody, you know what? You get through all this stuff. You get, you get through it or you die,

Jeff: social distortion.

Merlin: social

D

Jeff: band I do not like,

Merlin: I don’t care for them. It is not my thing, not my thing, but I get it.

There’s a lot of those early eighties bands where I get why people love them. People like Brett, but like they

Brett: kind of always wanted to, like social distortion,

Merlin: Yeah,

Brett: there.

Merlin: yeah. There’s, it’s,

you

Brett: to mix social distortion up with bad religion.

Jeff: Performative plaid pants.[00:35:00]

Merlin: I like

Jeff: distortion,

Merlin: Triple P, I like, um, uh, yeah. To me that’s a lot of that, uh, well, I’m not gonna say ’cause ’cause Brett will get mad. A lot of that

Brett: Why

Jeff: bad religion.

Merlin: because you like that sc bullshit.

Jeff: Oh, man. You, you guys have all toured,

Merlin: You gonna miss my, Hey, you missed my English beat beginning.

Brett: I,

I like, I like the specials. I’m not like a big

Merlin: I like English

Brett: general.

Merlin: Oh, I know, I know. Well, and and what’s the one with the guy who died? Uh, that used to be, is that the one that used to be Operation Ivy? No,

Jeff: the one with the guy who died? We’re 50 and

Merlin: the one with the guy who died. The one with the guy who died. Oh, that guy. The singing guy. Uh, rancid. Rancid. No, what are

Jeff: uh, do it again. Uh, y’all

get close.

Brett: no one, from Rancid has died. Are you talking about the Mighty, mighty Boss tones? That voice you just did.

Merlin: no, they do. Uh, it’s spin. No,

Brett: Oh,

Merlin: just kidding. I’m just no, I’m just sitting on [00:36:00] weird nineties music.

Jeff: It’s been seven

Merlin: Now the addition that Chris, the addition that the wonderful comedian Chris Fleming has made to that is he adds a very slight. Constant y sound to the beginning and, and try, try doing that song, but do it with just a little bit of a

Jeff: What song?

Merlin: yin,

Jeff: been Seven

Merlin: because no, no yin one week since you look at

Jeff: Oh, this one?

Merlin: do YY spin, um, uh, but anyway, you should check that out.

You should check out that, that, uh, show hip parade. And, uh, and the emo one is, is really, really good. And also, you know what, that guy, he also makes, um, a playlist for, uh, the trash theory guy also on, on

YouTube. Highly recommended. I like it when people make playlists of their stuff. That makes me

Brett: So Jeff, in your head, in your head, was that Prince or was it Ena

Jeff: I was going,

Merlin: oh, it spin.

Jeff: spend seven

Brett: Right, right.

Jeff: I was doing Sade. I was doing Sade. I know what Prince wrote it, but [00:37:00] I

Merlin: Oh, that’s good.

Brett: He did a really good

Jeff: Uh, yeah, he did. He was good at what he

Merlin: I just heard his, uh, somebody on the internet just posted, I’d never heard, have you heard him do a short but lovely version of a Case of You by Joni Mitchell from the same show where he premiered Purple Rain 83. It’s really pretty. It’s really

really pretty. I love, uh, if like Power Pop, uh, Jason Faulkner, formerly of Jellyfish and other things, and, uh, Brendan Benson, he, um,

Jeff: Jesus Christ. I haven’t

Merlin: yeah.

Oh, come on, spilt Milk. That’s a great album. Uh, but anyhow, he, uh, he does a wonderful power pop version of, uh, both sides now by Joni Mitchell that Jeff will specifically find for show notes

Jeff: Mm. Fuck. Well, hold

Merlin: I, I don’t, I don’t know how to, I don’t know how to log into your app.

Jeff: was jellyfish one of the bands with the guy had a funny hat?

Merlin: Yep. And he was in before Spilt Milk. That’s spilt milk is my, is my jam. And the drummer stood up

Jeff: And the drummer stood up like low,

Merlin: like low sh Lowe’s playing. I’ve [00:38:00] been shushed at so many Lowe shows. Um,

Jeff: I walked out of the only

Merlin: Sh

Jeff: I went to, and I love that band.

Merlin: I, there’s no way to be any quieter. Why are you sitting on, why are you sitting on the floor? This is not romper room. It’s a rock show.

Stand up.

Jeff: Those sticks are mallets. Quiet.

Merlin: It is the,

Brett: Low was

Merlin: yeah, I, I, love them. I love that curtain meets the stage. It’s a great band, but Jesus Christ, people stand up.

Jeff: Yep.

Shopify Sponsorship Segment

Merlin: This episode of Overtired is brought to you by Shopify. Lemme ask you a question. Have you ever, uh, been dreaming about owning your own business? One that you can call your own because in addition to having something to sell, well, you’re getting another stuff.

You’re gonna need a website, a payment system, probably need a logo, maybe a way to advertise the new customers. Um, I’m just here to tell you, it can be so overwhelming and confusing, but that’s what we’re here to talk about today, Shopify. Uh, if you wanna learn more about Shopify right now, you can go to shopify.com/ Overtired, but you probably already know them.

And even if you don’t know them, I can pretty much promise you that you’re using them. Um, I use Shopify all the time, and sometimes [00:39:00] I don’t know it, you know, bet on them and myself. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. 10% of all get this, this is crazy. 10% of all e-commerce in the us.

From household names like Mattel and Jim Shark, which is definitely a company to brands. Just getting started,. so you get started with your own design studio. Hundreds of radio to use templates that Shopify helps you. They build a beautiful online store to match your brand stock. Because here’s the thing, during that business, ’cause you want our business, as I like to say, like Seth Bullock says, you know, I’m in this hardware business.

If you’re in your hardware business, business down, you know you, you gotta pay the rent elsewhere, engine every morning. And the thing is, you’re there to sell stuff. You’re not there to be good at this other stuff. If you’re good at this other stuff, you’d have a different job. And if you, if you lived here, you’d already be home.

So what do you do? You accelerate your content creation. ’cause Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and they can even enhance your product photography. Because remember, if you’re a photographer, you’d already be a photographer. You can get the word out.

Uh, like let’s look. You have your own very own, uh, marketing team all behind. You [00:40:00] can easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or scrolling. That’s yet Shopify is your commerce expert with world-class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping, to processing returns and beyond.

So if you’re ready to sell, you’re ready for Shopify. Turn those dreams into

Jeff: Cha,

Merlin: and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. So here’s what I want you to do right now. This is called the call to action.

Jeff: listen

Merlin: This is a call to all my past actions. Here’s what I want you to do right now. You sign up one, do you get into one? Do do you know how little that’s hardly any money at all?

Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today@shopify.com slash Overtired. I’m gonna say that again. Please listen carefully. You can find this on your, uh, on your home, home computer set. You go to shopify.com/ Overtired, say at thrice, and it’s almost like praying shopify.com/

Jeff: Overtired.

Merlin: There’s nothing worse in this world than an American

Jeff: on, hold

Merlin: than an American man in his second [00:41:00] year of college,

Jeff: Oh,

Merlin: a woman major in Synology.

College Life Challenges

Merlin: What was your question, Brett?

Jeff: on. My son, my son and his is in his second year of college and, and he just had me order green body paint ’cause he’s gonna be, let’s say his name is

Merlin: Is he a psych? He’s not a Synology major,

is he? Oh,

Jeff: computer science, but let’s say his name is Jimmy. I said, what are you doing this for? He is like, ’cause I’m gonna be green Jimmy for Halloween.

I said, that’s pretty fucking funny. That’s pretty fucking funny.

Merlin: What’s screen Jimmy?

Jeff: Nothing. It’s just him but green.

Merlin: Oh,

Jeff: We’re pretending his name is

Merlin: See, I used to do that

and it was never fun. I, I used to do like a minimal effort, Halloween costumes. One time I came as everybody I went to high school with, and all I did was wear a Guns N Roses shirt and make fig Its, and I, it wasn’t funny. It

Jeff: I can beat you. I did Robert De Niro one year, and all I did was put a little black dot where

Merlin: Oh, that’s sweet. You could also be, uh, yeah, a beauty mark. Um, I’m fine. Um, we’re just about done here, right? Look, how don’t these kids look little? Did you see that Billy got a shirt? Did you see Billy got a shirt with his name on the back? Did you see that? [00:42:00] Uh, second year of college. Okay. One thing at a time, you guys.

Jeff: Okay.

Merlin: getting really confusing.

Just kidding. I’m just kidding. Um, second year of college. Oh no, you survived the first year. You’re not dead. Now you’re smart and you know stuff and there’s somebody who’s younger than you and you’re closer. Not again, I sound like I’m anti youth and I am not. I really enjoy being young and I enjoy aspects of young people quite a lot.

Um, but it’s an anomaly. I want you to know that. But second year of college, oh man. There’d be dragons because it’s not just me. I think, I think it’s a lot of people.

Brett: as seniors then? Like does something mellow them out by the time they’re in their

Merlin: Well, you know, one part of expertise, this, this, this is gonna sound very head up your As ’cause it kind of is. But you know, there’s things we know. There’s the no knowns and the unknowns and all that Donald Rumsfeld

Jeff: Yeah. Go to the war with the army you have? Yeah.

Merlin: but the same, same guy. But the, uh, but in that case, like you don’t know what you don’t know when you’re, uh, in your first year, or at least I didn’t, I didn’t know what I didn’t [00:43:00] know.

And it’s just, it’s really easy to get. It’s the thing that Dreyfus and the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition, it’s called being an advanced beginner, which is the kind of person, like if you’ve got two Zen mind beginner’s mind and all you can do is follow exact recipes, you’re probably less likely to fuck up in a lot of ways.

You’re not gonna go off the beaten track. The real dangers with the advanced beginner, which is somebody who thinks they know stuff about stuff and where they don’t really have any broader domain knowledge, it’s just they haven’t failed enough. Somebody, somebody like Marco Armand, like Marco Orman, somebody who hasn’t failed enough in life to really understand how hard it can be. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. But that, that’s, I mean, uh, le less dangerous than a senior. I don’t know about that, but I think you do learn more stuff about stuff and.

Brett: No, that

Merlin: you just gotta put miles, you gotta put miles on the tires before you really know, you know?

Brett: I would say so. I. When I, I, I, I’ve been writing music since I was [00:44:00] very small. Um, got my first Casio keyboard when I was like

Jeff: SK one, was it an SK one?

Brett: I don’t remember.

Merlin: That’s, that’s a, that’s a sampling one. I had a, I had an SK

Jeff: Hello? Hello?

Merlin: I also had an MT 40.

Brett: but then in high school I took music theory and up until I took music theory, I was very creative and I was making like, just some crazy stuff that I went back to and listened two years later.

And I was like, wow, where did that even come from? But then I got a little music theory in me and it kind of ruined me. Um, not

Merlin: we overthinking it or feeling

incompetent?

Brett: Well, I just felt like I had this basic set of rules. Like I, I was not advanced in music theory. Like I had year one. Like four, four part harmony like rules in my head and, and it made me stop.

Every time I would write something, I would [00:45:00] second guess what I was doing and

Merlin: Just even thinking about like something like a chord inversion, you don’t really need to worry about that. If you play long enough an inversion, you won’t even know I didn’t, I would do chord inversions without knowing that’s what it was. It’s just, if you call it that and you make, and you say like, oh, well, you got the wrong number of sharps on your staff, or all that stuff.

It’s almost like somebody who, like, they want you to learn all of the quote unquote rules of advanced Dungeons and Dragons before you ever learn how to tell a story. And it’s like, well, we need all these tables and dice throws and stuff, because that’s how we looks at all those rules are important, but ultimately it’s a game and it should be fun.

You know what I mean? And like, I had the same, I mean, I, I failed music theory when I was a senior. ’cause I was, I was very oppositional. But I, I agree. Also agree with you. It’s like that phrase, a little learning is a dangerous thing. We’ve learned just UN just enough to start overthinking.

Brett: Yeah, exactly. Which is when? When you say second year of college, that’s what I think of. But I was a freshman my second year of college. ’cause I

Merlin: year in a

[00:46:00] person’s life. Oh,

Brett: Yeah.

Merlin: where, where

Jeff: translate. I didn’t go to college. I’m trying to translate what a second year is, or if you can even translate or if

Merlin: no. It translates to a, it translates to a million things. I mean, I think of the workplaces, this is off the dome, but think of the workplaces you’ve been in that have like self-appointed experts, like somebody who knows how this place runs. That’s not the office manager. Or, or for, I mean, there’s all kinds of places where like you’ll, you’ll run into people who espouse, I’m gonna put this carefully, espouse a confidence in their skills that may not be based entirely in good reasons or reality, but they, they do like, have the, the confidence.

Uh, I I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s specifically a college thing, it’s just, it becomes, now we’re on a different topic. But the thing with colleges, and the thing that sucks is that in the United States, at least in my lifetime, college has become so synonymous. With, um, cutting the cord. I don’t know.

Becoming an, becoming an adult, right? In a way that becoming a [00:47:00] teenager maybe kind of was a big deal, you know, in the fifties or sixties. All I’m trying to say is like, it sucks to me that, okay, so when you go out on your own re regardless of how independent you’ve been, regardless of how caring of an environment you’ve come up in the bottom line is somehow the rent has to get paid.

The clothes have to get washed, gas has to get in the car. Uh, another thing you learn in college, good low stakes environment to learn this in is, you know, sometimes you’re just gonna have to decide what you’re not gonna read or do. This week, there’s not enough time to do everything. Well, guess what? This sucks so much.

And I’m not saying this to like look point down, but like another youth thing, but like, guess what that’s fucking life is, there’s all kinds of stuff. And like how do you become good about that? How do you become smart about that? With that becoming emotional about that? How do you learn the difference, for example, between, um, we can’t afford that and that’s not in the budget.

Jeff: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Merlin: That’s a distinction lost on a lot of people. And so, you know, uh, there’s all these kinds of things where you’re like, well, yeah, that makes sense now. Fucking a I am [00:48:00] in my forties or fifties. Like of course that makes sense, where you’re like, yeah, but you earned that through so much difficulty in your life.

And the part that bums me out is I wish there was something besides even, let’s exclude the hassle, stress and cost of going to college in any way. Let’s just leave that off. Let’s act like that’s all taken care of. Well, the laundry has to get done. The gas has to get in the car. The books you, if you have two.

How can I put this? If you have five pounds of work and a two pound bag, there is not a single person who’s gonna help you with that. And, and if you haven’t figured out you’ve got five pounds of work that needs to, however you’d like to think of that, I you could just think of it as time. You could. Maybe it’s easier to think of it as time.

If you have three one hour tasks and one hour left, something’s gonna have to happen. You could choose to shave a little off all of those. You could completely skip two of them. I can’t tell you. And right now you can’t tell you because you haven’t done it

enough. Uh, this is why I think it’s good for kids to fail in low sticks environments.

I think it’s good for adults to fail in low sticks environments. I think it’s good for [00:49:00] everybody to fail in low sticks environments.

Jeff: be able to know when it’s a low stakes environment. I feel like that’s its own

Merlin: Everything. If you’re me, everything feels like a high stakes

environment. Yeah, exactly.

But I know that this is just something, again, in that document, which I’m always happy if you would wanna link to it. Uh, the wisdom, the thing it is like is that, you know, you. You, you ought to let yourself and others fail in a low stakes environment because, and this is, this is the money shot.

Success need not always be costly or deadly. And we get so used to fail failure, fail as like a zero again. Zero or one kind of binary as like you succeeded or you didn’t. What do you mean you succeeded? Or you didn’t? You succeeded so much every day and you haven’t even fucking realized it. ’cause you didn’t realize that whether or not you went to college, you eventually mostly learned how to do laundry.

You mostly learned how to get gas in the tank. You mostly learned how to deal with a roommate. We all have had to deal with roommates. It’s just that, you know, college, all this pressure, you could drop into that and like, Hey, guess what? Welcome to adult world. See you Thanksgiving. Like, have [00:50:00] fun. Go be kids.

Just go figure this stuff out. And the way that we treat and. Teach and counsel kids. This has come up so often in so many of my shows lately. It drives me bananas the way that we, we add so much unnecessary pressure and emotional valence to so many things in our life. And then wonder why people get upset about

it. And like you go like, oh, oh kid. Well I hope your grades were perfect for 12 years. ’cause now you’re putting your mother and I in the poor house so that you can go off to, you know, whatever college and and like. But it’s entirely possible that one reason college didn’t work out in the first year. Sure.

Could be academics or whatever you wanna call it, school work. It could mean maybe it’s the first time you’re out from under your parents’ fucking thumb and you finally get to do your own thing. And it could be something as anodyne as you stay up later than you should too often and you get a cold sore and then you’re not getting your work done.

You didn’t realize it soon enough. You had five pounds of work to put into a two pound bag. There’s so many points of failure in that first year of college for [00:51:00] everybody. Um, and I just wish there was a way to ease into that more easily and to not feel like if I don’t succeed, if I don’t, I will never succeed at my four to 14 years of college if I don’t succeed in my first term of college.

So if I don’t succeed hugely in my first. Try at college. My, my life is over. I mean, I might as well just like make or get made into sandwiches. Like what used do I have to the world? I’ve disappointed everyone. I suck. I can kind of do my laundry. And that’s partly because you asked somebody to do all of these new things at the same time.

There’s no other point in your life except maybe what joining the Marines, I don’t think there’s that many other points in your life when you’re asked to do so much impossibly different. To get good at so many impossibly different. Yeah, exactly. At the same time. ’cause each has a stake. It isn’t just that like, well if you forgot, you know, your mom can throw your jeans in the dryer because she knows that trick.

Like whatever it is. And then that, that day, that morning, that dark night of the soul will come where you’re like, we’ve all had that. Where you’re like, oh [00:52:00] no, the walls are closing in around me. ’cause I thought I was spinning all of these plates. Okay. But actually things are worse than I thought and now I have to man manage.

I don’t even know how many points of failure at the same time. And I think,

yeah, go ahead. No, that’s it.

Jeff: Learning through my, my son in his first year of college, he’s in his second now, uh, just so you have all these big things, so you have to learn at once, but then I get a call because he is at the Walmart, and he is like, I don’t know which of these laundry soaps to buy.

You know, it seems like some of them are a bad idea for me. And you’re like, oh my God, you’re mad. You’re

Merlin: You should see me with Instacart telling them what toilet paper to get. I, I, it’s not even that I care that much, but like you’ve asked and now I’m like, that is so overwhelming. And that’s also time, that’s time. That’s, that’s, that’s cycles picking classes. I mean, isn’t that kind of another one? All this stuff we think of as ancillary and like water under the

Jeff: stay in a class. Right? Like and what

Merlin: Yeah. To to to draw, add, drop stuff. [00:53:00] Yeah. Yeah. All that kind of stuff. Um, I just, um, I’m talking about myself today and that’s gonna have to be okay. Um, I do the show. Thank you. Thank you. I’m gonna get my hiller mustache back. Um, I. Do a show with John Siracusa and, uh, we were talking about on a recent episode that I really enjoyed.

The Wisdom Project and Life Advice

Merlin: We were talking about like, him trying to advise, especially his son who is gonna be going into computer stuff, like trying to advise him like, Hey, look, you know, I’ve been in a lot of workplaces and like I know how there’s warning signs and red flags, and we’ve all, I’m sure I imagine had those of like red flags, you know, where, where, you know, for example, when they bring you in for the interview, everybody in the office looks kind of like Stockholm Syndrome.

Like, Hey, how’s it going?

Jeff: Yeah.

Merlin: Get back in the closet, Patty Hearst type situation. But like, the thing I said to him is like, because I don’t, I, as much as I love the Wisdom Project, which I can be misconstrued, the Wisdom Project is not me trying to give you help and except insofar as I hope you’ll find [00:54:00] it useful, but it’s not designed to be a self-help book from somebody who’s smart.

It’s designed to be a catalog of pain from somebody who has not been good at it. And every single one of those things in that document came from somebody’s pain. Often my own, very much, often somebody else’s pain call somebody what you, what call someone what they wanna be called and don’t be a dick about.

It didn’t cause me any pain. I caused a lot of other people pain because they didn’t meet my id, my idea of what they should be called. And I had to learn that and that was hard. Um, so whilst I’m not single-mindedly interested in giving advice to anybody, especially my kid, my kid’s fine. Doesn’t need my help.

But what I was saying in the Syracuse is if there’s anything I really do wish I, not that I could have been advised, but I wish I could have gotten, I wish I’d had bio available to me, is the idea that you can survive a lot more than you think.

Jeff: Yeah.

Merlin: And the thing I said to John is you have to be careful how you apply that.

’cause on the one hand, if that were advice to his son, it sounds like you might be [00:55:00] saying, oh, you got this great job at a start. You barely got this really good job, quote unquote, good job at a startup, gimme a break, whatever you, but you got this job where you’ve basically agreed to go in and have your entire life turned upside down for the prospect of a seam of gold and gotta produce that color just like Ellsworth.

But I may have fucked my life up flat on hammered shit, but I stand before you today. A man beholden to no cock sucker,

Jeff: no human

Merlin: human cock sucker or the God anyway.

Jeff: No. Human cocksucker is the genius, the human.

Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. He just leaves in the

Jeff: It’s a theology.

Merlin: Keep your own tally. Um, but, um, the, it sounds like you might be saying in that horrible, horrible way that so much advice came to me.

I bet you get this, Brett. I just, I just, I really bet you got this, and I bet you get this, that kind of like caustic. Midwestern, maybe Northern Midwestern, but that certain kind of caustic, you know, I dunno if you guys have been following on rectus the whole thing with compulsory [00:56:00] naked swimming in public school, but where we normalize these incredibly insane things and make them codified policy.

And then to, to, for a long old John Siracusa quote, we’ve always cut the ends off the roast. Why do we cut the ends off the roast? Because we’ve always cut the ends off the roast in passing. Do you guys know that story?

Jeff: Pat, cutting the ends off the

Merlin: Yeah. There’s an old, there’s an old, old story that illustrates that I learned about from Syracuse.

And when I say that over and over, I like people to make, make sure people that aren’t just Syracuse fans. Now, um, whenever we make a roast, you, before you put it in, you’re learning how to cook, right? Your, your

mom or grandma. Let’s just, let’s just keep it matri Petra matri linear. Your mom goes, oh, we’re gonna teach you how to make a roast.

You get the, get the, the, the pot out. You cut the ends off, you put it in, you see sand, it’s like, oh, why don’t we cut the ends off the roast? Um, um, I, my, my mom, it’s just, it’s part of, part of the preparation.

Jeff: Yeah.

Merlin: Now follow me. And at that point you’re going like, well that’s crazy. ’cause you can tell already the, the, the uh, chekhov’s, uh, chekhov’s roast at this point is obviously in evidence.

So [00:57:00] you’re going, haha, that’s the clue, right? I’ve watched law and order, but, but hang on. ’cause then you go like, so you play the story out and eventually you get all the way back to, well, when my family came here from Poland, we only had one pot and it was very, very small. And even though we didn’t have a lot of food to make something like a roast, when we could afford it fit into there, we had to cut the ends off to

Jeff: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Merlin: just sit with that for a second. I know it’s not that profound, but boy does it. Doesn’t that ever come up in life?

Why ‘

Jeff: cause I’ve never cut the ends off a roast,

Merlin: Why do, why do we cut the, we cut the ends off the roast because we’ve always cut the ends off the roast. Well, is it because it didn’t fit the pan? No, it fits the pan fine. What does that have to do with it? It’s true. You got the, you, you, you’re so successful now. You have so much roast and so much pan. You have so much going on. You could put, you could put roast in pans all day. You never even had to find out why. You used to have to cut the ends off the roast, but it became received wisdom and you kept passing it along.

And that’s the same kind of Midwestern. Horse shit advice that used to get passed along to me [00:58:00] with this feeling of, you’re gonna do this or you’re gonna go to hell, you’re gonna do this, or you’re going to gravely disappoint grandma, you’re going to do this. Or like comes like fraught with all of this, I accidentally quoted one of my all time favorite back to work titles and I thought I was making up a new expectational debt.

You arrive in the world, you, first of all, you got original sin that’s on you that before you, you were born with original sin. Brett, that’s you. I’m looking at you original sin. You probably never ran into this anyway.

Jeff: Brett definitely ran into this.

Merlin: But what could be greater than original sin in terms of you fucked up, you never asked to be born, but you were born, but you’re part of the species that killed Jesus. So you begin with, with, red on your, on your, on your ledger, and we’re gonna leverage that, things like that for the rest of, for as long as we can control you.

And finally, last thing from the doc there. Be careful of people who try to motivate you with fear, [00:59:00] because a lot of the people who try to motivate you with fear, that’s all that they’ve got. And they know it. It’s just you haven’t figured it out yet. You have not yet figured out that all they have is motivating you by fear.

Brett: Sure. Well, and in a lot of cases it’s all they’ve known.

Merlin: That’s all they’ve known. They’ve always cut the ends off the roast.

Brett: Right.

Jeff: Yeah.

Merlin: It’s just, it’s um, it’s weird and it’s, it’s weirder than weird right now because my kid, my kid does well in school and I mean, nobody in our house gets mail anymore except my kid. It’s, it’s just so weird to me to like be, I was so unattractive to colleges. I was attracted to the Marines, uh, because of my PS or, uh, asvab.

I did it. I did extraordinarily well on the asvab, not very well Armed Services, vocational aptitude

Jeff: Ah, got it. Okay.

Merlin: the Marines were coming out to h the house in government cars to like pick me up and take me in to like, watch movies and drink coffee. Like please join the Marines. And I was really thinking about it for a [01:00:00] while ’cause I didn’t have anything else, but, um, very desirable.

But right now it’s, it’s crazier than ever, ever, ever. It’s been crazy for so long. And Jeff, you must get this to some extent, like where you’re like, oh my goodness, it is really quite awfully expensive to go to college. And even let’s, again, let’s even assume it’s paid for, which it ain’t. Um, I mean, I, I’m not, I’m certainly not that alarmed AI guy, but at the same time, like, I don’t know if I wanna undertake a. Maybe not Cs. I don’t know if I would do like a computer programming major right now. Uh, there’s a lot of stuff I don’t know if I

Jeff: looking at bailing on that

Merlin: for 40. For what? For 40, 50, 60. 80, 80 grand a year. Talk about debt.

Jeff: kid too and he is recognized that quickly. He is like, I love programming. That doesn’t mean I need to be a CS kid.

Merlin: Sorry, last thing. And then we’ll do whatever you want. Um, the, you’d be surprised what you can survive because you bounce. And the thing is, if you’re me, [01:01:00] uh, I can’t speak for you. Uh, bt but like, I thought everything was a catastrophe. I thought everything that went wrong. I thought every eviction, I thought every, I thought every empty tank of gas.

I thought every late bill I could feel in my bones. I can say this to you guys. I now know because of trauma. I, I could feel it in my bones. Excuse me, shivers right now to think about the sense. Um, the sense is that I associate with that. I can feel like you ever been panicked and your, your arms and hands get cold and it feels like the blood’s leaving your body.

That I, I now know that’s one of my panic responses is that it feels like I could, right here in this particular, I can feel blood. It feels like blood is leaving my body because I’ve been through that so many times and I’ve been more than happy to rehearse, rehearse and rere, rehearse and do dress re I got a title coming Be Ready, the dress rehearsals of my trauma.

Jeff: Oh, I don’t know if that beats Chekhov’s roast

Merlin: pretty good. We always cut the ends off. We always cut the ends off checkoff. [01:02:00] Um, but not sulu. Oddly enough, the, um, but’s not funny. The, the, the, the, uh, the, it was the advice part talking about John’s kid with Alex and the advice that we give. ’cause it kind of sounds like you’re saying, Hey, I’m gonna be Midwestern dad.

Now. You’d be amazed what you can survive, you know? My father beat the shit out of me for no reason, and I turned out great. I beat the shit outta you for no reason, and you’ll turn out great eventually. As long as you accept my beatings in the spirit that they were

Jeff: Well, and and you’ll be surprised that you can survive is different from saying you’ll be fine.

Merlin: It is, but the final part, just, just, yes. I would love to talk more about that. That just the part I was saying that Syracuse is, this is a, the kind of fine distinction that gets lost on someplace like the internet is like if you is, let’s say his son were to be fortunate enough to get a job at a startup somewhere.

Yeah. Sounds great.

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Merlin: Um, and then they [01:03:00] find that it is a toxic environment and all those red flags were true, you know? Um. The mean dad voice would seem to be saying, you’d be surprised what you can survive. Stick with it. I never want, and this is the other thing I said to Syracuse, like, what if your kid’s gay?

What if your kid’s an actor? What if you’re constantly telegraphing to your kid? What, even with your best advice about their specific situation, if it comes couched in a judgment about their deeper decision making, you’re a piece of shit and they should hate you because you were not supportive of them.

And now you’re trying to say, I told, not saying Syracuse does this, but you’re trying, which he does, but you’re trying to say, I told you so to your kid now. ’cause you’re like, well you didn’t try hard enough not to be gay or to not be an actor. Like you didn’t, whatever it was, you did these, but now I’ve still got lots of great advice for you because I love you and you give all this advice.

It sounds like you’re saying you’d be surprised what you can survive as an, as a, um, kinda a patois of, you’d be surprised what you can put up with because of what I’ve put up with. But what it also means is you’d be amazed what you can survive. [01:04:00] What if you bounced from this job, but what if you went into it with a different state of mind than this pervation, um, mentality, or this like Merlin’s blood is leaving his shoulders feeling.

What if you saw it as simply not, not to be Pollyanna, not to be positive, but to avoid being catastrophic about it and to avoid making it always the worst? So yeah, you could say that if you’re a piece of shit, you could say you’d be survive surprised what? You can survive as a way of saying, well, like the way you survived my beatings for now.

But it can also mean you’d be survive surprised what you can survive if you’re true to the little voice in yourself that tells you where the good version of you lives, and that’s the direction that you need to be moving. Now, which dad do you wanna be? Which anybody do you want to be? Do you wanna be the one who’s constantly reminding them of the mistakes they made to disappoint you?

Or do you wanna be the kind of person who lifts them up to say whatever the fuck you’re becoming could not make me any happier? And I wanna put all of my wood behind that arrow.

Jeff: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. [01:05:00] Yeah. How old were you when your dad died?

Merlin: Seven, almost eight. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Halloween, Ron. Halloween. Woo, spooky.

Jeff: Wow. Yeah.

Merlin: Um, yeah, so, I don’t know, man, but it’s, it’s, so, actually it’s funny because the more I think about, I hate to call it advice, but that’s what it ends up being. But that document’s been so good for me, writing that, thinking about that, forcing myself to edit and change and then rethink about those and are there ones I wanna take out and all that kind of stuff.

’cause it, that, that’s what got me reconnected with the idea of how much pain I’ve caused, or how much pain has been, in some ways unintentionally, often been caused to me by doing what seems like the right thing, or to quote the movie Rules of the Game. The terrible thing in life is that everyone, everyone has their reasons.

Everybody’s got a reason that they’re, how they are. They, everybody’s doing the best they can every day and more is the pity. Fred, are you doing okay?

Jeff: he’s shaking his tic-Tacs.

Merlin: TicTacs.[01:06:00]

Brett: I, I am,

Merlin: Let’s get down to Tic-Tacs.

Brett: I, uh,

Jeff: Oh, ouch.

Brett: we should, if we’re, are we going to do a Gude this week? Do you guys feel like it?

Jeff: Aptitude.

Merlin: got nowhere to be, I gotta pick up some medicine and then I’ve got to record with Syracuse tonight.

Jeff: on, hold on. Guitar.

Guitar Moves with Matt Sweeney

Jeff: You were talking about guitar. Have either of you watched the YouTube series by Matt Sweeney called Guitar Moves? Holy shit. Do you know who Matt Sweeney is?

Merlin: I know that name.

was he in Sunset

Jeff: Chavez, you remember that Band

Merlin: Oh, Chavez.

Jeff: But he’s, but since then, he’s a session guy who’s done everything from Cat Stevens to Iggy Pop, to Bonnie Prince Billy, um, uh, I mean it’s just, he’s unbelievable.

He is a total sweetheart. He’s a super fan in, in the best way. And he does

Merlin: Oh, I like that. He likes the music that he likes. I.

Jeff: He like, is it 15 minute? Roughly 15, 20 minute edited videos with guitar players where he talks, he has his guitar and they have their guitar and they show him things he’s done. Like James Williamson from The [01:07:00] Stooges, he’s done Ace Freely, which is a really great one, a really like sweet one.

Um,

Merlin: I played the trout. He

Jeff: did, he did Josh Ey Hammi Hammi.

Merlin: I love that

guy.

Jeff: he’s great and it,

Merlin: Oh my God. I love the way he plays guitar.

Jeff: you would both love it. And given that Ace Freely just died, I wanna really recommend that. So here’s the thing. I don’t care for Kiss. I fucking love the man Ace freely. I don’t even know. Not the guitar playing.

Even

Merlin: Did you ever see him interviewed on the Tom

Snyder

Jeff: was just gonna say, I was just

Merlin: I play the Trout.

Jeff: If you go watch the Tom Snyder interview a Kiss, all

Merlin: Chris and Space Ace. Um, Peter, Peter and Space A are over here in one world completely high on shake

Jeff: going

Merlin: He

Jeff: that

taste freely in every interview, in that, in that era. and

Merlin: Actually women are very attracted to us. Yeah, I play the trout

Jeff: Gene Watch you Highly recommended it. I’ll put a

link to the Thomas Slander show, but that caused me to watch a whole bunch of interviews with these f freely. And he doesn’t

Merlin: I don’t know what, I don’t know what he’s is. Is he, is he as wacky as he [01:08:00] seemed?

Jeff: he, he doesn’t

Merlin: Because he drank, he drank a lot, right? It was mainly

Jeff: a lot. Oh, real, real big problem.

Yeah. Anyway, watch

Ace Frehley and KISS Trivia

Merlin: I like New York Groove. I think that’s, I think that’s one of the best tracks on all of the Kiss Solo albums,

Jeff: So I went and listened to the first KISS album, which I’ve never listened to all the way through because I decided I love Ace Fraley. And then I

was like, no, I don’t need kiss, I guess. But I, I appreciate it. I appreciate the

Merlin: that the one with No, that’s

not Strutter.

Jeff: New York Ballsiness

Merlin: Which one’s? The first one? What’s on there? Is it, um, black Diamond?

Jeff: Uh, black Diamonds on it.

Merlin: Yeah. Oh, is it dressed to

Jeff: Which I only

Merlin: Not dressed. Is it, is it dressed to kill?

Did I get that to write? Right. And I remember it’s black and

Jeff: here for Kiss trivia. That’s the point. But I fucking love Ace

Merlin: You can

Jeff: as a person, even though he is clearly a very difficult person.

Merlin: Hey, well the joke is ’cause Tom, Tom Snyder mispronounces the instrument that Gene

Jeff: Yeah, he says, uh,

Merlin: So you play the

Jeff: Yeah. Here you play the bass.

Merlin: And then a and a space, a and I don’t remember this ’cause this was a running joke in Bacon Ray for five years. And then occasionally Mike Coleman would just say over the [01:09:00] microphone. Yeah, I play the trout.

He,

Tom Snyder Interviews and Iggy Pop

Jeff: Also recommend any Tom Snyder interview, but especially his last show, which

Merlin: he’s wonderful.

Jeff: But his interviews with the PLAs Asthmatics with Iggy Pop. Iggy Pop with that one really changed me in certain ways. But Iggy Pop says, Iggy, you’re bleeding. You just played. Why are you bleeding? ’cause I’m on your show, Tom.

Merlin: Oh,

Jeff: Wendy Williams. Great. Tom

Merlin: Detroit. Rock City, they call it. Wow. Wow. That was there, there was a commonality. Huh?

Wendy O. Williams and Milwaukee Riot

Merlin: Where’s Wendy? Where’s uh, Matics? Where’s Wendy Williams? Are they from New

Jeff: she’s from Milwaukee, I think. The PLAs asthmatics I think,

Merlin: Uh,

Jeff: they had just played in Milwaukee when she did the interview. I’m looking, yeah, there was a riot in Milwaukee at their show, I think is the point. Hold on, I’m looking it up.

Merlin: She, I just, I remember she had, uh, she had electrical tape over her

Jeff: Yeah. Electrical tape over her nipples. Yep,

Merlin: nipples.

Brett. Brett say nipples. Brett say nipples

funny. [01:10:00] Nipples Nipples

Brett: that

Merlin: Nipples.

Brett: very German

Merlin: Did you know this? Here’s a life

Jeff: I nipples

Merlin: nipples I’ve on seen my nip mine nipples. Mine. Mine nipples. Um, before you name any animal, you should yell it, uh, out of the back, the, you should name it off.

You should yell the name of your prospective animal name off the back of the, the porch of your trailer and see how it sounds and how you feel about it. I would feel good about yelling nipples. You should not name your animal anything you wouldn’t want to yell.

Jeff: Uh, that’s

Merlin: Same for your kid. This is why you shouldn’t name your kid ris.

Jeff: Oh, that’s a problem. Okay, so she was born in Webster, New York. And, um, let’s see, uh, famous for partial nudity, exploding equipment, firing a shotgun and chainsawing guitar. She was like, Gibby Hanes before Gibby Hanes, um,

Merlin: Yep. And but also you got, you got the Detroit connection with Iggy. ’cause the Stooges are from Detroit. And then of course, kiss, um, had, had, uh, had, uh, on the album, uh, [01:11:00] destroyer, I believe,

Jeff: Uh, just to real quick, before we’re done with

Merlin: Detroit Rock City.

Jeff: to, she traveled to Florida and Europe, landing various jobs as a lifeguard, a stripper, and a macrobiotic cook. She’s

the best. She’s the best.

Merlin: Your time starts now.

Jeff: She’s the best. Anyway,

Taskmaster and Playlists

Merlin: Do you guys watch Task Master? You don’t, do you?

Brett: No.

Jeff: a couple episodes ’cause of you, you, you sent me a

Merlin: Yeah. It takes, it, it takes some getting

Jeff: I, no, I need to, I need to get

Merlin: No, no, no, no. I have a really good starter list on, uh, YouTube that I, I, I update. No, no. Here’s the thing. I’m fucking great at playlists. It’s, it’s my, it’s my oils. I love playlists, but I, I mention it

Jeff: Wait, what does that mean?

Merlin: Oh, like how you paint.

Jeff: Oh, yeah.

Merlin: But I, um, I update them also. Like I have a very good, one of very good live performances that I keep updated. And my, the one that I baby the most right now is my taskmaster starter list, which is six or seven episodes where if you don’t know where to begin with taskmaster, pick any of these. And as with all my playlists, feel free to skip [01:12:00] around.

Like, I won’t be mad. Like if you go to the one that’s like, just thousands of songs that are in the order, they were on the album. You don’t have to listen to all of those. If you don’t like Huskerdoo, you can skip around,

but you probably should like

huskerdoo. I will never forget you. I will, I will never forget.

I I will,

Jeff: Okay,

Merlin: I will. I I will never, I will never, I will never forget you.

Jeff: No, thank you. It is a

Merlin: I will never, I will never. I will never. I will never. I will.

Never forget you. I

Jeff: You know, Bob

Merlin: You think you’ve made it to the top? If people know your name, you’re still the same. Yeah. He used to, he used to write, I heard he used to write stories for,

Jeff: Great. Live performances. Just please go check Iggy Pop doing the song. Five Foot one on Tom Snyder. Can I please read the first lines of five foot one?

I’m only five foot one. I got a pain in my neck. I’m looking up in the city. What the hell? What the heck?

Merlin: That’s pretty

Jeff: mean, god damn. Bob Dylan.

Brett: Can, can, can you guys drop some links for say this taskmaster playlist and this, this interview [01:13:00] and, ’cause I’m losing track.

Jeff: I’ll

Merlin: No, no. I, I, I would love to do that. Can I also ask a favor? And in band favor? Um, in-band favor. Can you guys, no, it’s okay. Your people can hear it. I don’t care. Um, can you, could also, could you please send me just the raw, shout it out

so I can, yeah.

Jeff: Are you putting it into your, um, jato?

Merlin: My dingus. Mudding

Jeff: Are you using

transcripts, like

Merlin: Jato. You say what? What, what, Jeff, what’s Jao What that means is that another one of your apps?

Is that like Spur or Fluk or one of your other notetaking

Jeff: song where he says, Jato?

Merlin: Oh, I see. I, I know who you’re talking about. Uh uh Wait a minute. Hang on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s from, uh, is the actor Happy? Is that from, he has the actor

Happy. I saw him in Hayes Valley and he was fucking great,

Jeff: You, you saw him?

Merlin: Mm-hmm. Um, and I think, I think, wait, I saw Lamb Chop around that same time.

I don’t think I saw them together, but I saw Lamb Chop at, uh, great American. Was that until [01:14:00] started, you know, what’s that song is that is the Aer Hector, happy Brett. This is all gonna be in notes.

Brett: you.

Merlin: Vic Chestnut. Vic Vic, Vic Chestnut, and then he played, he had, he had all those kind of physical problems and he played guitar.

Jeff: He was in a wheelchair, right?

Merlin: He was super in a wheelchair.

Jeff: was he a paraplegic? I forget the,

Merlin: Don’t know he

was

Jeff: paralyzed, I think below the waist,

Merlin: Well, I think he had, he had some kind of a movement situation,

Jeff: Okay.

Merlin: is my new dance move that it is not

Jeff: Uh, my diagnosis is you have a

Merlin: You have a movement situation.

Jeff: have a movement

Merlin: We need to get you on the negative 70 degrees to the table til you’re facing forward. Animals would be raised UN slaughtered,

Jeff: guitar

Merlin: In danger of having a mine Cheff gap?

Jeff: mineshaft

Merlin: I watched House of Dynamite. It made me think a lot. Don’t watch House of Dynamite. It’s not good. I have others TV shows that I’d be happy to suggest. I, I’m currently suffering through a blight of, uh, B plus tv.[01:15:00]

Jeff: B plus tv.

Merlin: Too much, B plus tv. Yeah, there’s a lot of good stuff out there though. Um, and I got a lot of music.

Very excited about music and apps. Apps. You people love

Jeff: fucking love music?

Brett: I have, um, I have stopped listening to audio books momentarily, and I just fall asleep listening, not watching Bob’s burgers

Merlin: Oh, we walked out of my kid’s tr my kid has a terrible cold. Like, oh, my kid has a terrible cold. My kid had his captain on the cross country had Billy’s birthday, 18th birthday yesterday, and Billy’s senior day where they say, I sent you guys photos of when you say goodbye to the seniors on the team. He had all of that happen yesterday.

We were walking back to the car to go home and you know how this is in life. You, you can’t unhear this, but we’re just walking to the car. And my 17-year-old son goes, oh my God. And for some reason, the way he said that sounded so much like Bob Belcher. It was [01:16:00] so funny to hear it like a high school student go, oh, you know how he does.

You seen the, have you seen like, oh my God, compilations.

Jeff: No.

Merlin: Compilations of just Bob Belcher saying, oh my God,

Jeff: Oh, I’m,

Merlin: if you like Bob’s burgers, you know how funny that is. Are we, Are we, doing this?

Brett: Um,

Merlin: Things haven’t been so great with Tony

Brett: h John Benjamin is a

Merlin: John Benjamin has a van also, which o has, uh, Nathan Fielder on it.

Brett: love that show.

Merlin: That show’s so fucking weird.

You know, that’s Comedy Central, right?

Brett: I don’t, I don’t remember

Merlin: I think so. They, they take some weird little swings like Key and Peele. How did Key and Peele ever get made? Me, neither.

Jeff: Oh my God. How did Key appeal ever get made?

Merlin: Oh.

my, I got to be there two weeks ago. I, I, Alex has so much less expo, my friend Alex, that I do a podcast with has so much less exposure to what I consider classic media than I do, but also has no recollection of having seen anything.

And really, it, it’s like having a beloved family member who, like, say for example, likes the Marx Brothers or thinks they like the [01:17:00] Marx Brothers, but doesn’t remember anything they’ve done. Or Chris Fleming for that matter or the

Jeff: will I be able to play piano?

Brett: have the com. The

Jeff: We

Merlin: I couldn’t before.

Jeff: if we had eggs. No,

Merlin: can leave in a minute.

Brett: DHD and, and complex trauma has destroyed my memory. Like, and I can remember that I like something if someone says, Hey, have you seen? I can be like, yeah, I love that movie, but I don’t remember the movie.

Merlin: I, oh,

Brett: the time.

Merlin: it makes conversations so awkward. Especially if you’re talking to somebody who still has their faculties and still likes to play that funny game of do I did the, sorry, how can I phrase this? You’re somebody who still has their faculties, still has their memories, still has their importantly saliently confidence about their memories and constantly makes announcement about how they remember everything, about everything.

Well, sometimes what I’m telling you, the story, it’s not about a fact. It’s not a, sometimes it’s about a vibe and, and example of this from a couple years ago that has come up more than once. [01:18:00] Hey, mad, you’re not gonna believe who I saw at the coffee place.

Jeff: Two.

Merlin: Uh, I saw Melissa from preschool. Melissa? Yeah.

You know, the one with the daughter who did long list of things? That is all shit that happened. Oh, you mean Alyssa?

Jeff: Yeah. Yep.

Merlin: Because now you’ve made the story fun, but the shame on me for trying to bond.

Jeff: Thank you for that bow.

Merlin: Uh, uh Are you, are you watching the Murdochs?

Jeff: No,

Merlin: Oh,

Jeff: uh, hold on, hold on. I, I, I said it wrong a minute ago. We could have, if we had eggs, we could have bacon and eggs. If we had bacon. That’s it. That’s the Marx Brothers thing I love.

Merlin: um, I, I like to cite the one from, uh, duck Soup. When, uh, the one about who says to Margaret Dumont that you, you better, you better make, get a move on. I heard they’re gonna tear you down and put up an office, bu in our apartment building where you’re standing. [01:19:00] Um, you can leave in a minute if that’s too soon.

No, you could leave, you could leave in a huff if that’s too soon, you can leave in a minute and a half.

Jeff: Yeah.

Merlin: You haven’t stopped talking since I came in here. Have, were you vaccinated with a phonograph needle? 1933. Boom, boom, boom.

Jeff: that’s amazing. My dad still uses the one when he has a surgery where I’ll be able to play piano when I get out. Uh, yeah, sure. Oh

Merlin: I couldn’t before

Jeff: always wanted to play piano Good

Merlin: Uhhuh. Uhhuh, I think, I think the one I heard was doctor Dr. Uh, Dr. Will I be able to play violin after

Jeff: that’s what it is. Yeah. He does piano. He fucked it up. I’ll

Merlin: it’s okay. ’cause I understand the point of the joke,

and this is why you’re doing the thing. And this is why I say, say somebody, somebody, somebody that I love maybe might tell a story and go, yeah, I saw Alyssa.

And I go, oh, that’s awesome. And we talked for a while. And then two minutes later, the person who is just a, an anonymous character, a Chekhov’s wife, uh, goes, I met Melissa. And then I would [01:20:00] go, I knew what you meant.

Jeff: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Grammar and Usage Pet Peeves

Merlin: And I’m gonna tell you something that I tell all my kids, by which I mean everybody in my life, I will only, I will almost never correct you about anything. And if I’m confused, I might ask a question. But I would love it if we all got out of the correcting business.

’cause I don’t think it

Brett: on that. I’ve,

Merlin: hard. No, it’s hard not to. It’s the

Brett: been a well actually guy

Merlin: Well some, ’cause sometimes it’s important

Brett: but I see it in other people

Merlin: if you’ve created a confusion.

Brett: necessary? Yeah.

Merlin: Well, Like if I started talking

Brett: if I’m gonna, press a point, it’s because I feel that understanding it is important, that the clarity is important to understanding it.

And like in those moments I can, I can justify saying, do you mean this or do you mean that? And, but people can take that the [01:21:00] wrong way. They can take that as a criticism

Merlin: I, I, I will, I will. Very rarely. I think I could be wrong. I could be very wrong, and frankly I don’t care. But I, I really feel in my bones that I am not a correcting guy. I’m also not an, I told you so guy. I’ve really worked on that. It does not help anybody. I’m not a correcting guy. If I have questions, if I was confused about what you said, like I, I think I have a pretty good idea what you’re saying, what you’re describing though.

And I think what, what I’m, what we’re describing though is like if I started going off, like I don’t know much about sports, but if I went off on the Jag about the San Antonio Spurs and started talking about this one player that I’m very interested, that plays there, and I talked about this for five minutes, not really knowing what I’m talking about.

And then at some point somebody realizes, is there any chance that you were actually talking about the um, Oklahoma City Thunder? And I would go, oh, that might be it. That is a totally coro,

I think you

Jeff: interesting. ’cause what I was just thinking, I do a ton of interviewing for my work now and when I was a journalist, and I don’t tend to correct people when I have a feeling what they’re saying is wrong. I will, after the interview [01:22:00] look at it and think, I wonder if they meant this, and then write

Merlin: But that’s, that’s one. ’cause language is a virus. Ooh. Like

it’s

Jeff: an energy killer too, right?

Like

Merlin: Oh, it, it

Jeff: injected something into the conversation that ruins the flow and the trust as well.

Merlin: I, I, I totally agree. But then there are, so like, I mean, over here on this other end, though, of course, just ’cause on how I am, there are the usage things that I think, but right up against. That’s not what you think it means. Like, I, I know when you say, I just, I don’t like when people say things, dumb things, pretentiously or pretentious things in a dumb way.

And this is a f

I’m

Jeff: the proverbial ex.

Merlin: could be, could be.

Jeff: That’s an example.

Merlin: Well, I’ll give you some examples. And this is what, uh, these are dumb guy problems because if you’re a dumb guy, uh, you have learned ways to mask being a dumb guy by saying things that you’ve decided sounds smart. And you’ve heard people say something a bunch of times and you know, I I, I’m not saying this is a catastrophe that’s gonna end civilization.

We’ve got plenty of [01:23:00] other candidates for that. But like wars do mean things. And one of the ways the communication, and it isn’t that it can never change, I understand that when I say out of pocket, that means somebody who’s unavailable when anybody under my age says out of pocket, it means they were acting all crazy.

And like I know that. And when I talk to somebody, I can know that now out of pocket used to mean they they can’t be

contacted.

Brett: with you. Yeah,

Jeff: Yep.

Merlin: Well, and now I know that. And so I, how do I avoid that? Well, I cut the fucking Gordian knot by not saying out of pocket to people who I think might take it in a different way. Then there’s the other dumb guy stuff. Gotta pull this up. Um, well, you know, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Donald Trump is tearing down, uh, part of the White House, which begs the question,

Jeff: Ah, can we do, can we do radio reporting stuff now?

Merlin: well, let’s do, we could just do a classic. Well, I think what you mean is it probably, I think what you mean is it raises the question,

Jeff: Yeah.

Merlin: it does raise that question, but it doesn’t beg that question because not a, that’s not a specific [01:24:00] logical fallacy that you’re trying to identify.

Jeff: you’d be forgiven for asking,

Merlin: Oh, I could not overstate this more. I heard someone say three times yesterday, and each time I’m muttered increasingly less under my breath. Actually, you super could overstate it and you just did. It cannot, it cannot be overstated how much rain is gonna fall in Jamaica. And I would say, well, if you’re saying that, uh, whatever, 20 to 30 inches, which is a fuck ton of rain, I mean, you don’t need to, you don’t need to jazz that up.

30 inches of rain in

a

day

Jeff: they started saying and they started saying three feet today, I think when I

Merlin: Uh, they said three feet. I heard that yesterday as well. But, but no, no, no, no. But, but just, just, just the idea of like, I cannot over, well, you can overstate it. Just don’t overstate the fact of it. What you’re over, the part that you’re overstating is the ential part, which is how strongly you feel about making a big deal about it.

I’m gonna pull up my usage.

Jeff: Well, you do that. I’m gonna tell you one of my proudest moments as a father. So my kids have had to hear me [01:25:00] rant forever about when a, a radio journalist says, but some disagree. And, and my son, who works for his student newspaper, wrote on their April Fool’s Day, uh, story. This long story. It was hilarious.

And the last fucking words were, but some disagree. it was beautiful. And I thought that is the funniest thing. He was, he did. It was satire. He was doing it for me. It was a little, it was an

Merlin: that’s so, that is, man. Do you realize how lucky you are to have that? Isn’t that sweet? You’re gonna appreciate

Jeff: Oh my God, I appreciate it. Now my, I felt like a hug. All right. Where’s your usage guide?

Merlin: Well, I’m screwing up our whole, uh, our app intents.

Brett: Yeah, we’re gonna skip, we’re gonna skip the, we’re gonna skip that. We’re gonna, we’re gonna

Merlin: I have such, I have such a good one for you. Maybe in the after show. I, I, I, I have, I have a game changer that involves my action button and drafts.

Jeff: you might as well say it,

Merlin: Maybe I should do my

Jeff: but do your usage then. Let’s do it. I

Merlin: No. No. Now see, like the problem is yeah, you play the [01:26:00] trout. Uh, what’s better? Should I send it to you? In the cockamamie app or in the text messages Thread cockamamie app.

Better.

Brett: to a text. I

Merlin: Okay. I think that’s you guys. Uh, this is on GitHub. This is a gist called usage. I dislike, sorry. This is called usage. I dislike, uh, AKA, an epicenter of wordsmithing for the enterprise.

Don’t. Here, Here, I’m just gonna do these rapid

Jeff: Okay.

Merlin: Don’t say this if you really may mean this. ’cause you can say signage.

Signage has a meaning, but don’t say signage if you just mean a sign. Don’t say enterprise. If you mean big company.

Not everybody’s an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur. Some people just own a company. Like artisanal really just kinda means fancy epicenter guys. Wordsmith learnings. Price point. Oh, you mean the price?

Oh, you know the price point. Well tell me, tell me in two sentences how a price point is different than a price in a way that is salient to how anybody would use that term. Learnings. Gimme

Jeff: Okay, hold on. You have words. Discount [01:27:00] convergence. What is a discount conversion? What do you mean when you say that?

Merlin: because you take a part of speech and adapt it to be a different part of speech in a way that weakens rather than strengthens the usefulness of the word. Is there anything you’ve ever experienced?

I know that was a big ask, but as one of the ho hopefuls as uh, the, who could, somebody who could oust the person who pens any of this stuff.

I just wanted to detail you on some of the ways that creatives are working on that spend. It’s a big ask.

Jeff: For anybody not looking at the list, which is probably most of you right now, Marilyn is

Merlin: If it sounded like you had NPR on, that’s because you did.

Jeff: Yeah, exactly. It is a random sentence generator for a

Merlin: Hi, I’m 25. I’m 25 and used to have a blog. Now I write for something. I guess. Well, that hopeful has been ousted and that’s why we penned this and why I’m detailing all the creatives on the

Jeff: rush to the hospital. Mm-hmm.

Merlin: Yeah. Unlike those times,

Jeff: When we amble,

Merlin: double down. Double down has got double down, has got to end.

Jeff: It’s gotta

Merlin: And then not penultimate, like, do you [01:28:00] understand?

Penultimate is such a good dumb guy word because they think it means even more ultimate.

Jeff: Even more. Yeah. It’s a great one.

Merlin: Okay. And then here, and, and I’m, this is not addressed to anybody. I’m just gonna put this out there. If you’re ever wondering in usage, in grammar, here’s a really good trick. You know, sometimes it’s difficult to know once you use the objective or subjective term of different pronouns or um, verbs.

And so you might say something like, um, Jeff and I. Uh, went to the Dairy Queen and you say, oh, I, is it Jeff and I or Jeff and me? Well, here’s the

Brett: take out

Jeff: Mm-hmm.

Merlin: And so yeah, go, walk me through that, Brett. How does that work? How, how does that sound when you, when you do that, if you’re, if you, in your mind, you’re thinking, am I getting this right?

So how do you do it?

Brett: yeah, so if you’re, if it was Jeff and I, Jeff and I went to the ice cream shop, you would just take out Jeff and say, I went to the ice cream shop.

Merlin: Does it make sense If it’s just one of those

Brett: you wouldn’t say me. Went to the ice cream shop. It gets a little weird with certain conjugations. Um. Especially with [01:29:00] she and I are in love.

You wouldn’t say I are in love, but you also wouldn’t say, me are in love. So like in that case it’s I, But,

Merlin: But, but, but like, here’s the thing is when you’re a little kid, you think that, and I is, sounds fancier. So you would say, oh, ’cause like things like the king and I, so you would say like, um, you might say something if you were using it when you should be using the objective, you are using a subjective, so you would say something like, uh, they went to the Dairy Queen with Jeff and I, did I get that right?

No, I didn’t because it would be Jeff and me because they went with me.

Okay. I’m

Jeff: I, I do this almost every day. The same way you hold your fingers up to see which one is

Merlin: left and right. Oh, oh. All the time.

Jeff: kind of trick.

Merlin: Um, so here’s the thing. Uh. Avoid. ’cause people tend to prefer, if they wanna sound smart, they wanna sound not like a dumb guy because you sound like a dumb guy who drinks from a jug. If you always use the objective form and you say, um, me want food

Jeff: Mm-hmm.[01:30:00]

Merlin: GenOn 30

rock me want.

So you say, I want food, you know, like a civilized person. Me want food. But like, if you wanna sound fancy, you always go to the subjective form. So you say I, you know, so, um, you know, uh, vacationed with wi uh, withnell and I, but you know, there’s almost never a need to say myself unless you are a rural Irish poet.

You don’t need to refer to yourself as myself.

I, that’s a classic

Jeff: I says to myself, says I,

Merlin: I said, I said, oh my God. I got tied up with my own shoe laces tied to the radiator. Were you just doing grandpa from dairy, girls

Jeff: was doing column from, Yeah.

Merlin: yeah, uncle from dairy girls.

Jeff: Yeah. best.

Merlin: he says to me, says.

Jeff: my wife and I say that nonstop.

Merlin: He just got tied to a radio with his own shoelaces.

It’s just not as nice.

Derry Girls and TV Recommendations

Merlin: Um, Brett, this is a very, very, very funny comedy on Netflix called Dairy Girls. And it’s Oh, okay. Um,

Jeff: Watched it twice.

Merlin: the episode with the tests and the dog peeing and the [01:31:00] Jesus crying. It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever

Jeff: Ever fucking put on

Merlin: Just the, the just all, all the scenes that, uh, I can’t, you guys can’t see me, but I’m, when, when there’s a scene where she thinks Peter thinks Peter the priest thinks she’s special and she’s trying to explain that to the Mother Superior and like, just that entire scene.

And did you ever notice that? Um, what’s her head? Uh, who’s the girl? Who’s the girl I like? Um, who’s the funny one? Mar Mar

Jeff: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is this the one that’s also in Bridger,

Merlin: she’s, she’s, always, no, no. Oh, I love her too. RoCE Royce. But what’s her name? She’s always eating something. The weird girl is always eating. She’s always putting something in her mouth and she like, Hmm.

Good point. Um. Myself. That’s so funny. Call him. And, you know, you know who’s in that, you know, who plays grandpa in that?

Jeff: Hmm.

Merlin: Uh, just a little guy named Sir Baron Sway.

Jeff: Who is

Merlin: Uh,

Jeff: Let me pull up call sheet, which

Merlin: hanging the hang of the, uh, uh, head of the Kings Guard, uh, in the early parts of Game of Thrones. And remember, remember, he won’t go all in for Gioffre who [01:32:00] sucks and starts, he gets him fired, and then he goes and he rescues Denarius from the Scorpion Robot.

Remember when the kid throws the scorpion robot and he goes and puts a dagger through it?

Jeff: yeah.

I didn’t realize that was grandpa.

Crazy.

Merlin: that actor. And I’ve just watched several things with a guy named, uh, a guy called, as they say, as John. John, uh, s says, Rory Coler. Rory.

But the rural ju, the guy who plays twins on our flag means death.

Oh, oh, sorry. Fucking TRO Bridge.

Jeff: Trobridge.

Merlin: TR Bridge, fucking TRO Bridge.

Jeff: That’s, uh, Brett, that’s the diplomat, which you must watch. Trobridge is unbelievable.

Merlin: Trevor is fucking great. That guy. Rory K. Rory k. He also

Jeff: nickel.

Merlin: have you Hmm? Have you seen, this is UN releasable. I love this, but don’t release this.

Have you seen, Have you seen, you could tell I’m getting really into it. ’cause I’m starting to do, y’all can’t see this, but I’m starting to do [01:33:00] my Steven Sondheim hand gestures.

Jeff: Yeah. It’s like a solar

Merlin: When Steven, when Steven Sondheim is instructing someone on how to sing, he does a lot of this kind of stuff.

Brett: Mm.

Merlin: It’s got that guy and he, who’s also does a lot of good Shakespeare stuff and he’s in a fantastic movie. I wanna recommend, uh, called Men Starring the Great Jesse Buckley.

Jeff: Oh

Merlin: And it’s by that director I like.

Jeff: Wow. That’s great.

Merlin: don’t say myself if you can work around it now, see some of these last thing, some of these are just, I would avoid these if you can. And the same way that I would avoid. If I wanna say to my, the person who lives in my house, who’s a young person, I don’t like, somehow I can’t, I’m trying to get it past that.

But if I say I wanna say to Billy, I wanna say, uh, let’s see. Uh, um, oh, um, if you don’t see me on fine, my if, because I’m in the tunnel, you know, I would just say I’m in the [01:34:00] tunnel. I wouldn’t say, if you don’t see me out, find my, it’s ’cause I’m out of pocket. ’cause it sounds like I’m personally conducting a riot.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah,

Merlin: So I would just avoid that

usage because if there’s a, if there’s, and this is why we like words people, especially word people, is that if is a more specific word, that if it, it has the, the meaning that you want and the feel that you want, you know, like, like the kind of thing where like Sue Sue Perkins calls, you know, calls Alex Horn like a human shit stand or something.

Like there’s certain kinds that have so much power to it.

Jeff: yeah.

Merlin: You know, gone missing really? Has the person gone missing? Did they turn up missing? Is that, is that a sentence that you’re proud of? This person has gone, where did they go? They went missing. You could just say the

person

Jeff: I, what I love about this is we’ve tipped over into fucking grandpa mode and

here and another one, God damnit.

Merlin: Yeah. Well, you like to interview people. You, you like to interview people. You ever sit down with somebody or catch [01:35:00] up with them? And when you do sit down or

catch up with them, do they

Jeff: of ’em, I share the learnings.

Merlin: and leavings, because you should clean up the leavings before the next people get the

Jeff: end trails.

Merlin: And, and so you say,

Brett: are indefatigable.

Jeff: Oh,

Merlin: oh, I don’t think we say that anymore. We do not say that anymore.

Jeff: I love that word. Invariable. Commensurate.

Brett: I’m gonna ask for an exception.

I, I’m fading. I can’t, I can’t go on. Do you guys wanna just go on without me?

Merlin: No, no. We should stop.

Jeff: that’s, that’s a But we’re not gonna leave you behind. Don’t never leave a man

Merlin: But, but if you’re in a place you’ve never been before that would nobody’s been. That’s, that’s unchartered

Jeff: He’s

Merlin: territory. Because if there’s no chart for it, it’s uncharted.

Jeff: Oh my God.

Merlin: Gilligan’s Island

Brett: side, side, side, side note, did you

Jeff: It’s all side notes,

Brett: did you know that it’s not chomping at the bit,

Merlin: it’s champing at the bit?

Brett: chomping at

Jeff: champing at the

Merlin: It’s absolutely

Brett: lifetime not

Merlin: I don’t correct people ’cause I know what they meant. But it is [01:36:00] technically champing

Jeff: What’s it mean? Championing.

Merlin: because a champ is the thing is not the thing that a horse is biting on.

It’s, isn’t that called

champing?

Brett: I,

Jeff: they were biting

Merlin: Chomping. Chomping is what teens do to popcorn. And

Jeff: bit was the champ.

Merlin: what?

It’s a problem with

Brett: I learned that this was a thing, I understood why, but I have already forgotten why. All I came away with

Concluding Thoughts and Sign-Off

Merlin: Let’s wrap this up and get Brett outta here. We’re, we’re not gonna release this anyway, right? Are we?

Brett: Uh,

Jeff: We’re gonna release it at half speed,

That was so fun. Thanks Merlin.

Merlin: Oh, thank you. Wait, is that’s the, that’s the show, right?

Brett: you. That’s the That is, I’m gonna, I’m gonna hit stop.

Merlin: Bye.

Jeff: What we’ve gotta say, get some sleep or, uh, what do you wanna do here? Hmm?

Brett: Hey, you we doing here?

Merlin: Hey, sleep.

Jeff: Hmm. hey, hey.

Understand the Customer's Problem (AES Hearth University Course)