438: Chekov’s Roast with Merlin Mann

Chekov’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 reall