Ep. 38: "With My Mind Bullets"
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Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How are you?
I'm good.
I'm a little mad.
No, what happened?
I've got ants.
Oh, boy.
I've got serious ants.
I've got ants.
And they are in the least likely place for ants to be in one's home.
Like ants in the kitchen, I understand.
Ants around the bathtub where you eat your sandwiches...
I understand.
That's just something you accept as a fact of life.
Yeah, but I have ants in my bathroom sink, and I don't understand what they are doing there.
Are they eating skin flakes?
Are they spying on me?
I don't understand it, but I have been killing them with my thumb, and I have created a kind of ant holocaust.
Yeah.
Are you trying to make an example out of them?
Well, I feel like I have created a kind of killing field where the ants that come later, they see the thousands of skulls of the ants that came before, all the ants that were wearing glasses, all the ants that had a college education.
Yes.
I have squashed them all.
And I would think that the later ants would be scared away or would go back to the queen and say, this is bad.
This is a bad scene up here.
Let's try a different sink.
Let's try a different sink.
Let's get out of this house.
I don't like this place.
You're kind of like Insect Kurtz.
I'm a little bit of an Insect Kurtz.
He's not a crazy man.
He's a great man.
But anyway, they keep coming and I stand there and I'm like, for them to get there to the second floor, to that sink, they would have to be everywhere.
They would have to be in the walls.
They would have to be...
They would have to be in my drawers.
They're ants in my pants, Merlin.
You see, you're like a Salvador Dali painting.
And I'm going to do the hula dance.
That's pretty good.
You should write that down.
I should.
You could use that.
I could.
I have.
Just so you know, I might be able to help you with this a little bit.
There are several books by E.O.
Wilson that I have not finished.
Yeah, right, including Elements of Style.
Yeah, sure.
E.B.
White and E.O.
Wilson.
Oh, whatever.
E-I-E-I-O.
I'm fascinated by ants, and I have actually a lot of respect for ants.
Oh, right.
Sure.
They're great.
It's funny, because in our house, this is a big topic of discussion in our home, not that this matters here, but we have three very, very different feelings about ants.
My wife, we get what they call sugar ants.
It's those little tiny ants that you get when it rains.
That's what I have.
When it gets wet or rainy, they get pushed out of their little ant home.
They start looking for different places, and I guess they get curious.
Oh, wait a minute.
You're telling me they have curiosity?
I don't know.
I feel terrible.
I didn't finish the book, but I don't know.
I don't know much about them.
Your wife wants no ants.
My wife despises ants.
All right.
Now, who is the Buddhist that is pro-ant?
I am somewhere near the – they call it the spectrum.
I'm about halfway down the spectrum where I don't like – to me, it's like what?
It's like anchovies and ex-girlfriends.
I just – I don't like being surprised.
I don't like ants showing up.
I go, ah!
I have a little bit of a start.
when i see ants but then i'm mostly okay with it my daughter loves the ants oh she came to my office which is written with ants right now and she she came up to me and very gently said daddy and she said hold out your hand and she she she let an ant crawl from her hand into my hand oh she's a nature lover isn't that sweet yeah so how could you kill the curious little ants that are just looking for a looking for shelter from the storm i
I should finish that book.
But my feeling is I try to be a good citizen, John.
I mean, not a really good citizen, but I try to be on the spectrum.
I try to be like an okay citizen.
Yeah.
Well, for instance, right now, I started to repair my bathtub.
I have two bathtubs in my house.
So one of them was in need of some repair.
So I took it apart and I started to repair it.
I've been using the other bathtub, which is the lesser of the two bathtubs.
But while I have the one bathtub dismantled, a spider has taken up residence in the bathtub.
I love spiders.
And it's not the kind of spider.
It's the kind of spider that uses a flat web.
uh he's he's made a web in the bottom of the bathtub and i don't know what he is hoping to find maybe he thinks that a monkey is going to fall into it you mean like like a trapeze uh net like like horizontal yeah it's kind of horizontal and it's sort of it's a little bit it's like connected to the bottom of the bathtub in multiple places so it's kind of like a it's just a sand trap that's more work than i've ever done in my entire life
Well, I know, but he is driven by his genes in a way that you and I are not.
It's true.
We have divorced ourselves from our genetic motivation.
I blame the culture of nice.
You know what?
Yeah, I think the public schools are to blame.
But in any case...
This spider is living happily in my bathtub.
And this is a bathroom that I don't let other people go into.
Visitors don't come.
Daddy's special bathroom?
Female guests that come to the house are directed to a different bathroom.
Because this is dad's inner sanctum.
And so there's a spider right now in the bathtub.
And I have no beef with this spider.
He's not bothering me.
He's waiting for monkeys to fall into his net.
And no girl is going to walk in there and scream and say, there's a spider in your bathtub and force me to deal with it.
So this spider and I have reached a comfortable rapprochement.
My only question is, why is he not, in the middle of the night, eating these ants that are sharing the bathtub with him?
Or sharing the bathroom with him, rather.
And I've come to the conclusion that spiders don't eat ants.
I think that it's a very sound conclusion.
Spiders don't eat ants.
I've never seen a spider eat an ant.
You know, I haven't either.
I haven't watched for it enough to say.
I've spent a lot of time watching spiders.
Oh, oh, I am, for practical purposes, hypnotized by spiders.
You're hypnotized!
I like them a lot.
I really like spiders.
And I don't know if this is some wives' tale, not to work ping pong, but for some reason, I feel like when I see a spider, it feels like good luck.
I like a spider, and I really, when I was little, I'd kill anything.
You should move to Seattle.
You would have good luck all the time.
Is that spider country?
Oh, boy, is it ever.
Spider, spider, spider, spider.
That's our state motto.
Spider, spider, spider.
Welcome to Washington.
That's true.
That's a terrific motto.
I want to circle back to this, but I want to get to the rapprochement part because I don't understand how you can have one.
First of all, taking apart a bathtub sounds like a lot of work.
It is.
A tremendous amount of work.
That's why it's still taken apart.
It's like when somebody tries to restore a fiat.
That's funny.
It's very easy to take a Fiat apart.
I've never seen an MG altogether.
I've only ever seen MGs that somebody started working on and never finished.
I don't think anybody's ever finished an MG.
No, they take them apart and then they think that they're going to drop a Chevy 350 in them and then they have a bucket of parts in the garage.
So that's what's happened with my bathtub, I'm sorry to say.
I took it apart and then I realized that...
There were other things that needed to be fixed while I had the bathtub apart.
And then pretty soon I was building a seven-sided lighthouse made of dreams.
I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but where do you enjoy your subs now?
You don't want to disturb the spider.
Obviously, you've got a certain – do you consider it a nemesis or a companion?
You don't want to screw up his web, but you need a place to have a sub.
Yeah, I know.
I'm having it in the secondary bathtub, the lesser bathtub.
Yeah.
Oh, I see.
So the under-construction bathtub where ladies are allowed to use the bathroom, the under-construction bathroom is where the spider is living.
Under-construction bathroom is the major bathtub that has the bubbles.
It has the electronic bubbles.
Whoa, wait a minute.
Stop there.
You got jets?
Jets.
It's got jets.
Are you kidding me?
Yeah.
Do you ever have ladies in there that hold a drink and like to run their fingers through their hair?
I have never allowed anyone to bring a drink into my bathtub other than me because there's no room on my bath desk for more drinks.
You don't have a bath desk.
Of course I have a bath desk.
I built a bath desk.
What'd you make it out of?
Well, I went to the thrift store and I found one of those serving trays that if you had a manservant, your manservant would bring your continental breakfast and your copy of the London Times.
So it's roomy.
It's nice.
It's big.
But it wasn't big enough.
These trays that are meant to go on your lap while you're sitting in bed, they do not span a bathtub.
The bathtub's quite a bit wider.
You're not talking about a bathtub side table or like a stool.
You're talking about something you can literally have go across the bathtub in front of you.
You can do your work.
You can enjoy a sandwich.
You can work on your memoirs.
Correct.
In fact, so here's what I have in a typical, when I'm bathing in the major bathtub in a typical afternoon, I have a large mug of coffee.
Then I have a secondary drink, either an Arnold Palmer, a Fruity Pleaser, or a smoothie if it's really the hot season.
And then there's the plate with the main sandwich.
You potentially have two hot beverages right over your dingus on a tray?
No, one's hot, one's cold.
The coffee's hot, the smoothie's cold.
Okay.
And then I have the sandwich, which would be the major part of the meal.
And then I have the lesser meal, which is like a scone or a snack.
And then a stack of magazines, and then a stack of unfinished crossword puzzles and sudokus.
And then my pen and notepad.
Uh-huh.
And that's basically it.
Once I get past the utter insanity of that, I can't believe I don't do that.
It's incredible.
And all I had to do, I bought this serving tray for a dollar at a thrift store.
And I added some, you know, I beefed it up.
I added some supporting cross members.
Yeah.
Uh, and, uh, and then I, then I put two big sort of, um, the main supports, the main beams, the load bearing beams.
And now I keep it next to the bathtub.
And when I get in the bath, I, I start to draw the bath and then I take the tray downstairs and I load it up with all of my bath accoutrements and,
And then I bring it up and I climb in the bath and I put my little table down.
I'm in there all afternoon.
Now, do you let some of the water out and then get more hot water in?
How do you keep it comfortable for that whole afternoon?
Well, in a lesser bathtub, yes, it's a constant, constant attempt.
That must be miserable, John.
This has put a serious, if I could say not to work ping pong, serious chink in your workflow.
It doesn't, because I've worked it out so that it's... You know, there are so many different kinds of bathtubs.
There's the one... So many.
Where you can leave... When I grew up in my childhood...
which is where you grow up, I had a bathtub where I could turn the slightest trickle of very hot water that just trickled, and it was like I was at a Buddhist retreat.
This water was just like, and it was very hot, and it kept the bath at an even temperature.
As the bath cooled, this little teeny trickle of hot water just replenished and rejuvenated.
It was a homeostatic drip.
That's right.
These other faucets, the ones where when you turn it on, it's cold, and you have to crank it all the way over to full to get it to be hot.
I don't understand who designed that.
It's a terrible design.
What if you want a little bit of hot?
You cannot get it.
And that seems to be certainly what you find in hotel rooms.
Well, have you ever been in a hotel room?
The first time I saw this, at first I couldn't understand it.
I often have trouble understanding showers.
I like to come back to your mom's house.
She has the most confusing shower bath I've ever used in my life.
There are seven handles.
Well, I don't know if you remember what happened.
There was an incident.
But I like the things in a hotel where they got a separate dingus for the temperature and for the pressure.
So you could have a super hot...
You could have 110 degrees or whatever, and then you could have just be a little bit in the shower.
You know what I mean?
I think that's very responsible.
That's an accelerator and a brake, or better put it, maybe it's an accelerator and a steering wheel.
The brake would be the drain.
People should have the power placed into their trust.
I've noticed.
How many of those stop signs are absolutely necessary?
Six.
That's right.
There are six absolutely necessary stop signs in the entire United States.
Three of them are four-way stops.
And some of the other ones we could probably let go in the next five to seven years.
Every other stop sign in the country is a total waste.
Because when you arrive at an intersection, if there is no stop sign there, unless you are a 95-year-old man and you left the house that morning thinking, how many people can I run over before I die?
you're going to arrive at that intersection, and you're going to say, look both ways.
If there's another car there, you make some determination who's going to go.
If only, John.
But here's this freaking stop sign, and everybody has to stop, and we're all standing there like, we're all being controlled by this piece of aluminum, and we're just like cows.
Like, I have to stop.
He stops.
We all stop.
Now we go one at a time.
Duh.
I hate this world.
I really do.
There's a lot you could do to improve it.
I don't want stop signs.
In the world of Supertrain, there will be no stop signs.
How will you handle people?
Will people be educated to know what to do or will there be some kind of a literal crane that you wouldn't want to impede people's flow?
I'm guessing you would only want a population that would understand that you don't need a fucking stop sign.
Well, what will happen, I'm afraid to say, is that it will be much harder to get a driver's license.
It will be like medical school.
Just under medical school, it'll be harder to get a driver's license than it will to be a lawyer.
You know what?
I want the highest qualified dentists.
Speaking as someone who has had a lot of hands in his mouth, I want the dentists to go through like an astronaut training.
Doctors, they just... I've yet to meet a doctor that knew what the hell they were talking about.
If Kirsten needs a ride, she hops right in and the DDS takes her where he needs to go.
I think when dentists have to go through astronaut training, they will stop naming their daughters Kirsten.
No kidding.
No, no, that's absolutely true.
Don't you have to move to Texas to become an astronaut?
You might have to move to Texas in super-trained land in order to be a dentist.
You might have to go to Texas for a few years.
How do you handle the skateboard and bike problem?
I mean, because I know, first of all, let me just say, I think this is a problem.
I think they don't see stop signs.
I don't know if it's by virtue of the fact that they're a few inches off the ground, but I don't think people on skateboards and bicycles, I used to think, I used to think when I was a smaller person that they were just ignoring them.
I now think they might be a little goofy.
I think they might be on the bicycle spectrum and they do not see stop signs.
Oh, they see them.
You think so?
And every time they run one, it is, in their minds, an act of resistance.
Right.
Look at what cars do, John.
Do you know what cars do?
Look at cars.
That's the response.
When I say this to people, do you understand how irresponsible it is to be coming down a 20-degree angle hill and blow through a stop sign on a busy street?
Not a four-way.
You're going to blow through a stop sign, and there's a busy road.
People are going to be going down there with their kids and their dogs, and you blow right through there.
And you know what they say?
They say, well, and seriously, this is the response.
Response is, oh, yeah, well, you know what cars do.
I just, I don't see where, I mean, does Supertrain have a solution?
I mean, let me put it differently.
What is Supertrain's solution for dealing with the bikers?
Here's the thing.
Mm-hmm.
I spent 15 years living in Seattle with no car.
And I was one of those pedestrians.
I'm embarrassed to say now, now that I'm a car driver and I drive everywhere, I'm embarrassed at what kind of pedestrian I was.
And I think you can guess.
I was, first of all, the kind of pedestrian that wore a soul patch.
Hmm.
And I was the kind of pedestrian... That makes you a target right off the bat.
I was really, really... This was the 90s.
Yeah.
But I did have a soul patch.
Hmm.
How big?
Was it a negligible?
Was it like one of those negligible ones that looks like it might be some kale or something?
It was blonde hair, and it looked like maybe I just missed it when I was shaving.
Sounds a little puby.
It was there.
It wasn't puby.
It wasn't curly.
It was just a little blonde, little tuft that I would stroke when I was thinking deep thoughts.
You can't think a deep thought with a soul patch.
Well, I realize that now.
Okay.
But it was the 90s.
In any case... Streets had to be crossed.
I'm going across streets.
I'm on my feet.
I don't have a car.
I don't even... It's been so long since I've had a car, I don't even remember what it's like.
I don't look at people in cars as being in the same species as I am.
People in cars are people who are eating antibiotic-treated beef.
And I am walking the streets of Seattle with a soul patch, and I am eating only lightly steamed vegetables.
It's like we're different...
We're totally different populations.
And I would step out in front of a moving car and turn my head slowly and glare at the driver until they not only came to a stop, but didn't squeak their brakes.
Like if a driver squeaked their brakes at me, I would glare.
What's the kind of threat?
it was well yeah sure a squeak don't squeak your brakes at me there were multiple times where i would put my hand on the hood of somebody's car and eyeball them as i was walking past like i was such a dick and it was based on the concept that pedestrians are not only do they have the right of way but pedestrians are right pedestrians are morally right and
again, it was the 90s.
I was a young person.
I did not fully understand that one day I would be driving a car and people would walk across the street and look at me, not anywhere near with the glare of, with the self-righteous glare that I used.
People would just look at me sometimes as I'm waiting at a light and I look at them now and go, what are you looking at?
Keep moving them, walkie.
Keep walking.
Walkity walk, walk.
Get out of the road.
At the time, oh my God, I would lope across the street, taking my sweet time.
And so, with that history, with that sordid history...
When I see a bicyclist who has those earplugs, those big earrings that are like sink stoppers.
Are you talking about like the grommet lobes?
The grommet lobes.
When I see a guy like that with his bike messenger bag and his loud pipe save lives bumper sticker.
He's got his bike lock in his back pocket in case he wants to hit your mirror.
Yeah, skinny jeans and one of them's rolled up and tucked in his sock.
When I see one of those guys blow through a stop sign and I go, oh, oh, you little prick.
I remember what a prick I was.
And I think, hmm, all right.
Yeah, you're falling into the same poor logic there.
I mean, there has to be a detente.
San Francisco, I am a kind of a pissy San Francisco pedestrian.
But I'm also – I try really hard to be a very considerate driver when it comes to pedestrians because here's the thing.
You move to a fruitcake city like this because you want a certain theoretical quality of life.
This is my feeling.
We're living in a society, to quote George Costanza.
And I really think that if you move to San Francisco, my neighborhood, my neighborhood is in – But you are lawful good.
No.
You're lawful neutral.
I'm a ranger.
But ranges have to be lawful something, right?
Chaotic, I think.
I'm not sure.
We'll have to look that up.
You put a lot of... I think ultimately you believe in the law.
You believe in laws.
Oh, I need the law.
I need the monkey web, for sure.
Yeah, and I think what you were saying is that this population of bicyclists has, as a group, adopted a kind of anarchic approach to traffic laws and that that doesn't suit you.
Mostly I'm saying they're assholes.
I mean there may be some kind of a deeper Weltanschauung, but I think mostly there's this sense of entitlement that comes from absolutely nowhere.
Do you think that riding bicycles attracts assholes or riding bicycles makes assholes?
John, you are really on to something.
I just hope that God Supertrain has an answer because I can't tell the difference.
It's like, does business development exist to attract douchebags?
Or is it that if we didn't have, you know, the douchebags have made that?
You know what I'm saying?
It's a Gordian knot.
You know, I went to college.
Yeah.
I did not graduate, but I went.
No, no.
And I think that business development is there to attract assholes because you could, on orientation day, you could walk around and just by the haircut, pick the guys who were majoring in business.
You know what I mean?
They came that way already.
Selfish haircuts.
Well, or just like too done.
Why are you wearing your hair like that?
It's freshman orientation.
You should be here in pizza stained sweats.
Instead, you got your hair all done.
What is that about?
It's a thing their parents did to them.
I just feel like – so the neighborhood I live in, which you've been to numerous times, is in something like the 90-something percentile of walkable neighborhoods.
I've looked this up on some internet thing.
Yeah, it's very walkable, although there is a slight incline.
If I was differently abled, I might find it hard to get down to the beach and then all the way back up.
Yeah.
I really think hills are ableist.
They are.
They should be leveled.
Absolutely.
No question about it.
It's funny.
They recently redid that big park that the soldiers ran out of towards you, you know, across the street.
Oh, yeah.
They did a really great job with it.
It took them a long time.
It could stand to redo that park.
Well, and it's funny.
It was somewhat melancholy for me because they knocked down the playground that I play with my kid on.
But they brought it back up.
Oh, man, it's great.
Did you hear the howling of a Confederate army that was displaced?
I got to be honest with you.
We've got...
I can't tell if it's a gold-shouldered or red-tailed hawk.
Is that right, gold-shouldered?
Anyway, I got this new app for my iPad that helps me identify birds.
But I couldn't tell.
It could have been a hawk.
But, you know, it could have been a private from Virginia.
I'm not going to lie to you.
God damn it.
Pedestrian pennies.
I want to come back to this.
I have a lady friend here in Seattle who was recently attacked by a crow on a downtown street.
Not a raven, a crow.
A crow.
Crows get pretty big.
I think I confused my ravens and crows.
Yeah, they have different faces.
Oh, okay.
Sorry, go ahead.
I don't mean to cut you off.
It's just you get so very close to helping me on so many things, and I feel like my stock is getting very thick.
Ravens and crows are very different.
Ravens can actually pick locks.
Ravens can do simple coding.
I bet Ravens see stop signs.
I had actually had a website designed by a raven or a team of ravens.
Crows are slightly less sophisticated, but they're also very social.
And she was walking downtown and a raven swooped down in her hair.
And this is in the middle of a busy downtown street.
And so she was trying to figure out...
What this was about, you know, she's like, is the raven protecting its nest?
I'm like, no, a raven doesn't nest on a sidewalk in the middle of town.
Ravens nest far, far out of town.
I couldn't explain what the problem was, but what I did suspect...
That's right.
They're redlined.
They call it steering.
They say, let me show you these.
You know what?
These houses are nice.
I think you'd be happier over in this neighborhood.
There's a lot more ravens and blackbirds here.
Welcome to our party.
Have you met Muhammad?
Is that Animal House?
That's Animal House.
But I said to her, here's the thing with ravens and crows, ravens and crows.
They talk to each other at night.
They compare notes.
It may not even be that you did something at that moment to personally offend that particular crow.
It may be that you have been impolite to crows in general.
And they have targeted you.
They're sharing intelligence.
That's right.
They absolutely are.
Now, you're the one who says you say the Soviets are the ones who won the war in Europe, right?
They're the ones who did all the heavy lifting over there.
Was that your quote?
You had a long day of quotes, and I couldn't keep up with all of them.
I'm thinking it's like the Allies.
It's like the Allies.
We all do different things.
When the war is over, we have very different things that we'd like to do, and sometimes we go at loggerheads about that.
You're saying here there's a certain kind of detente.
And they share information like the Allies would.
Well, but they are all... Crows are a Borg.
And a highly sophisticated one.
I think I'm thinking of mockingbirds.
Well, mockingbirds are a different thing.
But I have very, very... I have deep and wide experience with ravens and crows.
Really?
Growing up in Alaska, ravens are... Ravens stand four feet tall.
Ugh.
They wear... That is chilling.
Yeah.
They wear very, very nice outfits when they come to the DMV.
They are a completely integrated part of the allowed society.
You don't have to go any further.
I have a lot of very good friends who are ravens.
Some of them are extremely smart and articulate, and almost all of them are very clean.
You know what?
They're very clean.
They're very clean people.
You know, that's the thing.
I really hate to hear the casual discrimination against girls and ravens.
Super articulate, some of them.
Some of them, sure.
Well, you know, there's good ravens and bad ravens.
We should probably move on.
There was an incredible piece written in the Anchorage Daily News in the mid-80s about this guy who said, well, you know, we don't really know that much about ravens.
We don't know where they sleep at night.
We don't know really anything about them, considering that they live all around us.
I don't think that's correct.
No, in fact, in this instance it is, and I think it's true even of the crows.
Don't you think somebody in the raven racket would at some point follow a raven and see where it went to sleep?
Let me tell you.
Okay.
My mother and I, for many, many years, have at dusk gotten in our cars and chased the crows as they congregate, as they fly out of the city, congregate, they do congregate in trees at the south end of the town, and once all the crows have gathered in one massive crow parliament...
It's not a murder.
At this point, it's a parliament because it is tens of thousands of crows.
Then right at dusk, they all leave together and fly to the mountains.
And my mom and I, chasing after them in our cars, communicating to each other on our phones,
We have never been able to successfully find them where they go.
I don't even know where to begin.
You've got mysterious, mysterious avian commuters, and you and your mom are in some Wes Anderson movie where you're driving in separate cars with walkie-talkies, and you are literally driving as the crow flies.
That is right.
We are chasing them, and they elude us every time.
God damn it.
But this guy in the 80s, he set out, he invented a gun that would shoot a net.
It was a net gun.
And he went to a certain mall in Anchorage where the ravens all congregated at the dumpsters.
And he got out of his van and he shot the net gun and he captured 10 ravens.
And the following day he drove up in the same van and all the ravens split.
So he drove... Oh, you're saying they learned?
Yeah.
So he drove across town in this van, and he went to a different mall, and he shot his net gun and captured five ravens.
And the following day, no matter what mall he went to in the city, when he drove into the parking lot in that van, the ravens split.
Whoa.
So he rented a new van, and he repeated this experiment.
Soon he found that he could not drive into a mall parking lot in any kind of van, and the Ravens would split.
What kind of time frame are we talking about?
This is over the course of a few weeks.
Are you kidding me?
He started to arrive in a car.
Then it got to the point that this is his reporting, that the Ravens recognized his face citywide.
So he started wearing masks.
And then anytime... Is this peer-reviewed?
This is absolutely... I have this article.
Is this a weekly column or a peer-reviewed journal?
This was a big feature in the Sunday supplement.
Oh, okay.
Well...
He can't make up crow masks and something like that.
He says, now anytime a crow sees a person in a mask, they split.
He tried Cheetos.
He got a couple of ravens with Cheetos.
Then they wouldn't eat Cheetos anymore.
And so all summer long, he chased these ravens, trying to capture enough ravens that he could tag them and let them go to have a significant sort of case.
Yeah.
And he said they thwarted him at every turn.
He could never get a system down where he was capturing and tagging ravens because everything he tried, within a day, every raven in the city knew what he was up to.
Was he recently divorced?
And that's just the beginning.
This sounds like a recently divorced man.
I watched two ravens once steal a box of raven... Sorry, a box of raisins.
Did I say I just watched two raisins steal a box of ravens?
No, I think you almost said you watched... Not that I'll cut it out, but I think you said that you once... You started to say that you once watched two ravens steal a box of ravens.
Yeah.
Also, cut out that E.B.
White thing at the beginning.
That's embarrassing.
Oh, okay.
But...
the ravens one raven landed in front of my niece she had a box of raisins and he hopped up to her right just right out of her reach she was an infant or like a like a like a two-year-old and so she dropped the box of raisins and started to crawl to the bird and he hopped back just right out of her reach and she's crawling toward him and as he as she gets away from the box of raisins another raven swoops in behind and starts eating the raisins
He had a partner.
She turns around, sees the other bird, goes back to the box of raisins.
The other bird starts hopping back.
She follows the bird.
The first raven goes, eats the raisins.
And I sat and watched this happen.
These two birds ate her entire box of raisins, playing this like, I'm right here.
I'm right here.
You can catch me.
Just, oh, here I am.
Here I am.
And they back and forth, back and forth until all her raisins were gone.
Oh.
Oh, my God.
And now anywhere that she goes in the city, she can't eat raisins.
That's right.
Even if she's wearing a mask.
God, that's complicated.
They are very complicated.
So I told my lady.
I got to learn more.
We've kind of been fast and loose with ravens and crows.
Your interest primarily here is in ravens.
It sounds like they're the real trouble.
Well, except that in Seattle, crows are much more are much more common.
And this has nothing to do with grackles.
No, there are no grackles.
Are grackles stupid compared to ravens?
I would never on a public program say that any bird was stupid because I, at this point, believe that they are listening.
And you travel a lot, John.
You need to be able to move freely.
You need to keep these birds on your side.
I don't know whether the ravens in Alaska are communicating with the crows in Seattle.
It's possible they could have a translator.
I think based on the work of this gentleman in the mask, I think it's clear that they're operating on a much higher level than anybody wants to admit.
It's their world.
We're just living in it.
But I said to my lady friend, you were attacked by a crow on a downtown street.
What you need to start doing...
is do what I do, which is every time you see a crow, particularly a crow that flies down and lands at eye level, you know the way that sometimes you're walking along and there's suddenly a crow on a fence?
Oh, I hate that.
He's looking right at you?
I hate it.
When that happens, you have to look at the crow and say, hello, crow, and eye to eye, boom, boom, boom.
You're looking at him, he's looking at you, you say hello.
Does that peg use a bitch?
What?
No.
You're showing your respect.
You're showing respect, but you're also saying, I see you, motherfucker.
Okay.
I see you.
Like, you don't walk around.
If a crow or a raven flies down and lands on a fence and looks at you, and you don't look at him, whose world is it?
No, the crow.
Crow's world.
Crow's world.
You need to look at that crow and say, I see you.
And you see me, and I say, hello, crow.
You don't say, hi, Mr. Crow.
Let's settle this while it's easy.
That's right.
You know, and the other thing is I've been beguiled by many animals, by ants and by spiders and crows and ravens, and I've been annoyed by grackles.
But, you know, this is one of those funny things.
Grackles are some kind of Florida bird.
No, no, no, no.
In Austin.
You go to Austin, it's those deafening birds on the wires.
Oh, right.
The grackles of Austin.
They pee on everything.
Yeah.
The Grackles of Austin.
The Grackles of Austin.
I think Josh just signed them not long ago.
Here's the thing, though.
And, you know, John, you know this.
You're getting a little older.
There are things.
Okay, for example, you still eat spicy food.
I used to be able to eat a lot of spicy food.
And now if I eat spicy food, I'm going to be reading a lot.
Okay?
I know that.
I accept that.
There are some things that change in life.
I'm going to tell you one thing that changed in my life.
I used to think very little about birds in general.
If there was a bird in front of me, I'd say, well, that's a bird.
It was a macaw or whatever you wanted to talk or fly around or whatever.
I got to tell you, John, bird eyes freak the living shit out of me.
And I'm not even talking like Alfred Hitchcock movie.
I'm just saying that as you look into the eyes of a crow or especially a raven and you try to figure out what is on that bird's mind, you're going to see fucking nothing but yellow looking back at you.
and no matter how big the bird is, the eyes will always be beady, and that chills me.
Do you get freaked out by bird eyes?
I think they're super freaky.
I don't get freaked out because I feel like I am meant to be here on Earth.
You stand your ground.
Not only stand your ground, but establish... I establish with all animals, and in fact all living things, including humans.
Yes.
I try to establish that I am here for a reason, and you can either aid me, or you will be defeated.
Have you thought about printing that out and handing that to people, or is it something they should just intuit?
It's not something they intuit, it's something that I communicate with my mind bullets.
Ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha!
Ha ha ha!
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John, hey, now.
I got my bell back.
You know what?
We just turned a corner.
We found a corner and we turned it.
I hope there's no birds.
I believe that grackles are commonly, I'm looking this up now, people commonly mistake.
There's a common grackle is what you're thinking of.
They mistakenly call starlings grackles.
Grackles are a thing.
are a bird native to the americas yes starlings are imported from europe and so we do have starlings in proliferation well here's some fruitcake maybe in new york who wanted to have every you ever hear this story i know this is it's a true story this is everything in shakespeare is this true
All the birds of Shakespeare in Central Park.
I didn't dream that.
No, no, no.
And he released 100 starlings in Central Park in 18-whenever.
That seems like a terrible idea.
And now there are billions and billions and billions.
You got the invasive exotics.
Oh, my goodness.
Can I ask you just a couple quick questions?
This will be quick.
Of course.
Okay.
Do you agree that on the basis of your personality and the background that you – let's just say based on your learning and your personality, you feel like you can go head-to-head with an animal in an environment of mutual respect?
For the most part.
For the most part.
Are there some that you have trouble with or they have trouble with you?
No, no, no.
I mean, there are ones that are rabid.
I'm not going to mess around with a rabid animal.
I met a guy.
But you could control, you could control, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
You could control this relationship with the rabid animal probably better than 85% of other people, I'm guessing.
It's not the total wild card.
I have enough information that I could deal with a rabbit animal better than... You're telling me you can deal with a promoter, but you can't deal with a rabbit animal?
Rabbit animals, depending on how far the rabies has progressed, the only way to deal with them is with the blade end of a shovel.
Do you have to think about it twice?
I would not kill a rabid animal instantly because it might just be a pet that has eaten some laundry soap.
Does it really foam?
Is it real foam?
Yeah, foam.
Is it like spittle, like a math student would have?
Yeah, spittle, but like foamy, foamy, foamy.
Really?
Mouthful.
Okay, so I'm going to check off possibly sort of yes, but it sounds to me like you go ahead.
Would you not agree that amongst this kingdom and these phylum and kingdoms – I can't remember the other ones.
Kingdom phylums.
Genuses.
What do you got, genuses?
You've got all these different things, and it's – would you not acknowledge that there is a certain power in that ability to commune with them?
What I'm trying to get at, John, is when it is finally time, and I don't want you talking time frame.
I think that's careless.
When the super-trained generation well and truly arrives in a way that it's no longer a rumor, it's just something you're fucking dealing with now.
Do you think that you might like to be in a position where you can harness some of this power?
Somebody, you talk to a spider who could make a monkey net or possibly a grackle, a common grackle or an uncommon raven, somebody who could go out and literally figure things out on your behalf.
As an agent for you, you've reached a detente or a rapprochement.
Is this something that could be part of the super train program?
Well, I think it absolutely is.
You know, I have said for many years— They could get in your way, John.
If you're not in front of this, I'm just saying you're going to have to face them down in an X-Men-type situation.
No, it is a natural system that we have intruded into with our overthinking, and we are now separate from animals in a way that is not entirely necessary.
This is the problem, and I recently went to Comic-Con, and Comic-Con is an extension of this larger problem that I used to see in indie rock quite a bit, which is the mistaken idea that everyone is an artist and if we just clear out all the things in the way of certain people...
uh that they the art that they make is beautiful you know what i mean like everyone's an artist and and it's just that we are inhibited and we are uh we are locked in our small little worlds and we need to keep we need to be free we need to get free and then art will pour forth and i think that that is a terrible idea it is not true at all not everyone is an artist it's a kind of existential alchemy because not every piece of metal can be made into gold
Is that too much?
In fact, no metal can be made into gold.
Well, let's not go crazy.
But going to Comic-Con, you see a million people who have been told their whole lives that what they are doing qualifies as art.
They have been congratulated for doing things that are not art, and now they believe that it's art, and people are encouraged to congratulate them for it.
It's like, actually, this isn't art.
None of this, what you're doing is art.
In the same sense... You sound like you're dug in a little bit more than you were last week.
You were on the fence with the bronies last week.
I was.
I'm still on the fence with the bronies.
I think there might be stuff in the bronies.
The bronies seem nice.
I think there might be stuff in the bronies that I don't understand.
There still is stuff at Comic-Con I know I don't understand.
But there is also, it is absolutely the case that there is stuff that is being presented as art which is not art.
Is this an Etsy kind of thing where you make something, you make like Brezhnev out of your pubes or something, that kind of thing?
If someone made Brezhnev out of their pubes, I would call it art and I would not bid on it, but I would be happy to watch it be bid upon.
I like you.
I'm trying to keep an open mind and I don't want to get ahead of myself.
But I'm saying if I could eyeball that thing and I saw that and I saw that it definitely was Brezhnev and probably not pubes, I would say success.
Thank you.
Here's your ribbon.
You know what I mean?
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
The thing is, if it looks – I think it's going to look a lot more like pubes than Brezhnev.
I mean long hairs on the eyebrows notwithstanding.
But with animals, like take dances with wolves.
It's a classic example of a man who is commuting with a wolf.
Yeah.
And they find this commonality that they share.
Now, he was not sending the wolf on errands exactly.
Yeah.
But it was only a matter of time before he and the wolf were snuggling up around the fire and telling stories.
He also drank his pee in Waterworld.
Oh, I didn't see Waterworld.
I drew the line.
Kevin Costner, the line on Kevin Costner stopped in like 80, well, I guess 90.
Well, Dances with Wolves, that's the one that beat Goodfellas, right?
For the Oscar.
I don't follow their awards.
I follow Martin Scorsese.
I'm okay with that.
Martin Scorsese.
Good guy.
I support him.
Good fellows.
Good movie.
See, the wolf seems like an obvious thing to commune with.
I'm just saying, like, for example, in a comic that I have enjoyed at times called The Avengers, there's a team of these characters.
Not art.
Hmm?
Nothing.
Hmm.
I already feel like the crows and other birds of Washington State, of Western Washington.
I already feel that they and I are working towards a mutual understanding.
And it's only a matter of time.
You're already benefiting from their talking to each other.
They have already eyeballed you.
They have seen this John Roderick guy.
He's keeping an eye on us, and you know what?
We're keeping some fucking beady eyes on him.
That's right.
We need him on our team.
I got eyes on me.
I do not... Crows do not come and rustle my hair on a downtown street.
No.
Crows...
i am convinced are going a block or two ahead of me and checking it out and make sure everything's cool and then communicating back is that good for both of you i think so yeah are you doing are you doing each other favors is it something you know what i mean when we talk about daytime and i don't know if you know this but the russians don't have a word for daytime i'm one of my all-time favorite quotes you remember that is that a sting lyric
Russians love their detente, too.
I think it was during the Reagan years, somebody in his cabinet said that the Russians don't have a word for detente.
And somebody had to point out to him that neither does English.
But you know what I'm saying here?
Think of it this way.
You throw me the head, I throw you the whip, right?
You're saying, if I understand correctly, that's a movie quote, but if I understand correctly, you're saying that there is an unstated, unsquacked, untalked about
um relationship almost a really a business development relationship with the birds that's right that's right i see i i believe that that particularly these birds it is beneath their dignity for me to throw them a bread crust ah that's beneath everybody's dignity yeah they would they would they would happily do that it's so disgusting starve rather than have a human being like throw them some food it's like throwing chicken and a rat why the fuck would you feed a bird
So weird.
They can feed themselves.
But I feel like it is not a case where I am a mole inside of human society on behalf of the birds.
And I don't believe that they are, the birds that I'm communicating with are like betraying their own culture by reaching out to me.
I think that they recognize me as a kindred spirit.
And they say, there's a human we can deal with.
Let's just keep that on the back burner.
If we see something that can help him, slip it to him.
We've got a man on the inside, literally.
That's right.
But in the meantime, let's just go our separate ways.
If it comes down to it, we can go to this guy for counsel.
If there's some human bird war, we can go to this guy and maybe... Well...
I think things are going to get tough.
Things are heating up.
Yeah.
Well, you know, did you read about the crazy cat lady disease?
Turns out.
Supposedly there is... It's in their poo.
It's in the cat poo.
Yeah, that's right.
And so, but there's... I can't quote this from memory, but it goes something along the lines of, you know, there's certain animals that need to have a host, you know, inside of another animal.
That's a very interesting thing in the nature.
And if I remember this correctly, there's some kind of a... I don't know if it's a bacteria or whatever it is, but it's something... It's in cat poop.
And, and the thing is when, and I know crazy cat ladies ping pong, so I apologize.
It colonizes the crazy cat ladies brains so that they keep cats so that they become incubators for the cat poop bug.
Right.
I want to, can I stipulate one thing just for myself?
I don't, you don't have to agree with this obviously, but, but I would just like to stipulate this.
You know, when I say cat lady, it's okay to have a cat.
It's potentially okay to have two cats.
Are you afraid of getting letters?
Are you afraid you're going to get letters from people with cats?
No, I just want to try and help people.
I can't help people on the level you do, but I want to help somebody.
And, you know, to be honest, I want to help some cats.
So here's the thing.
What's the maximum number of cats that a sane person can have?
Three.
Three is real iffy.
Three is real iffy.
Four cats is over the border into crazy.
Yeah, I mean, cats are like tattoos.
Like, how do you know when to stop?
Like, once you got one, you go, fuck it, I might as well get nine, you know?
You're going to have animals in your house.
You're already a little unbalanced.
So what is the number of tattoos that you can have that is over the line and you're a crazy person?
One.
Okay.
All right.
You're going to get some letters.
Well, I'm not too worried about it.
People on hepatitis, they have trouble typing.
I have six cats and 14 tattoos.
And I'm a regular listener.
Dear sir, I am a grackle living inside of a man mask.
But here's my thinking on this.
And I want to get back to the bacteria or whatever in a second.
But here's the thing.
I think if you've got a cat, that's fine.
It's really good if you...
kind of tidy up after it for all of our sakes if you find yourself getting closer and closer to the 10 cat level i think i think it's time to start thinking about some stuff right i think when you get to the greater than 10 cat level you're operating on a slightly higher level now here's the thing i think at this point first of all also john are you aware that scrapbooking when people say scrapbooking you know that's code for hoarding right
scrapbooking is code for hoarding if you've ever go show me somebody this is like this is like dennis and kirsten if you you show me somebody who who is a quote-unquote scrapbooker who's not a hoarder i learned this the other day hugh hefner has been keeping scrapbooks since his teen years and he's up to like 3 000 scrapbooks he's like ladies underwear or like what
I don't know.
He clips his newspaper articles.
That's before there was Sudoku.
He presses flowers and stuff.
I don't know what he's doing in these, but he's got a room in the Playboy Mansion of all these scrapbooks he's been keeping since the 30s.
All right.
Well, this might be the category error.
I'm going to have to figure all this out.
Foreigners, though.
Yeah, but here's what I'm saying.
I mean, there's a commonality in all these things, I'm sorry to say.
All I'm saying is when you get to the point when you have greater than n cats, whatever that number is, the thing is when they die, you have to get rid of them.
I think the big problem is first you stop cleaning up the poop and then you stop getting rid of them when they die.
And I think when you have more than say five to 40 cats and they are dying, I think if you're not getting rid of the bodies on a fairly regular basis, it's time to start looking at yourself.
That's what I'm saying.
Oh, I think that's well past time that you should have been looking at yourself.
I'm not trying to be judgy.
I'm not trying to be judgy.
You're not throwing away your dead cats.
Well, you know what happens?
And the thing is, according to this bacteria or whatever theory, is that that gets in the poop, the poop's in the house, and now you supposedly— That is the best kid's song I've ever heard you write.
first there's a house and then there's five cats and the cats make poop and the cats eat the house and the house is in and it's like you know what it could be like one of those school bus campfire songs where you eventually go like 99 bottles of beer on the wall you know well before that guy in florida like like totally changed face eating as a meme forever is this the bath salts well the yeah that well but it wasn't bath salts he was just talking about toe-chewing cats
Well, I'm talking about cats that were eating people's faces when the people died.
The people died in their house of 15 cats, and then the cats ate their face.
That was the original face-eating meme.
Yeah, that's definitely up there in the ways I don't want to go.
There's a slightly fictionalized...
Well, the song is a slightly fictionalized version.
That song Marie Provost by Nick Lowe.
It's about a former silent film star where her dog ate her after she died.
She was a winner, but she became the Doggy's Dinner.
He was still developing as a lyricist at this point.
Yeah, Nick Cave.
Nick Lowe.
Nick Cave, that would be great.
He'd be white.
And the tabby nibbles at the toes, the toes.
Release the bats!
But you know what?
We shouldn't get into this because we're already going to get so many letters.
We're pretty far into it.
Written in calligraphy.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is this.
I think there is obviously – you know what?
It's your show.
I just think there's so much power in these animals.
And you can be furum or a genum.
I don't want to tell you what to do, but I can't tell you what to do, but it seems crazy to me not to leverage the way that this could benefit everyone, especially the people that you eventually want to smite.
But that's the thing.
I cannot, at this juncture, as much foresight as I have, as much insight as I have into these creatures, I cannot see the end from where I stand.
I've been working on my relationships with the raccoons,
of the northwest my entire life and i feel like the raccoons and i understand one another but they are inscrutable to me i can't i do not have the power to command them and they don't they don't seem to i mean they they definitely want to engage we have long conversations but then they they do their little bow put their little hands together and do their little like
Namaste.
Namaste bow.
And then they are off into the darkness.
And I feel like it is not a relationship that I'm trying to shape or move in any direction.
I'm just waiting and watching and keeping.
Every once in a while, we meet in a dark alley and I say, hello.
And they say, namaste.
And we go our separate ways.
And even if I die...
And all of this collected wisdom and it all just evaporates.
I don't think you'll die, John.
Well, it's conceivable.
If it happens, I think what will happen is that someone will take me out.
I'm sure I've already got a crosshairs on me.
Oh.
You think it might be an animal that does it?
No, no, not at all.
The animals know.
The animals know.
No, and I think the animals have probably protected me thus far.
In ways you may not even know.
Here's the thing.
Now, that spider, you never know.
It could be a Charlotte's Web, E.O.
Wilson type situation.
It could be something where that monkey net is there because you're not supposed to be in the tub.
Maybe there's lead in that tub and it would make you stupid if you licked it.
You're eating stuff very close to the lead.
You know you can have lead.
You can go to your Walgreens and you can buy a kit to find out how much lead you got in your bathtub.
Did you know that?
I didn't know that.
Do you know how much lead we have in our bathtub?
How much?
Shit tons.
In your bathtub?
1928.
They don't replace much.
I think our furnace is original.
But when you first get your kid and you worry about it, you don't worry about it as much later.
So you don't bathe your daughter because of the lead?
Well, I mean, now we don't.
I don't want to get into your parenting.
No.
No, you don't want to get into my parenting.
That's a raccoon in an alley, my friend.
I know it is.
Well, it was easy in the early days because you get a little bucket.
You wash the child in a bucket, and there's no lead in buckets by and large.
If there is lead, you remove it.
Did I do a bad job as a parent that I never washed my kid in a bucket when she was small enough to go in a bucket?
I think it depends.
It depends.
Did you do the sink or did you just do a dunk?
How did you do it?
No, from the time she was a very, very little person, I just took her in the bathtub with me.
Oh, with you?
Yeah, so I had a sandwich, I had the coffee, I had the smoothie, the newspapers, and then I had this little zygote.
Like a little bouncy seat?
Did she have any kind of a floating apparatus?
No.
She just sat on my knee.
Huh.
I don't think that's so bad as long as you don't, you know, singe her with the sub.
She didn't die.
No.
Well, you know, mazel tov.
I don't see a problem in the world with that.
Yeah.
The one fear, of course, the whole time was that she was going to poop, but she never did because, again, I looked at her.
She looked at me.
There was an understanding.
Yes.
She said namaste.
I said no poop in the bathtub.
You've never gotten one of those, huh?
She has never pooped on me in the back.
Never had a man on the boat.
We had one very tiny one that we all felt a little bit bad about, but it wasn't – I've heard people say – I mean some people, they make it sound like something that happens all the time.
Well, there are a lot of people who are doing a terrible, terrible, terrible job of raising their kids.
Well, I think one thing is they let their kids know that it's okay to poop.
I think when you send that message out, that's going to be reinforced.
I think your child should never know that you poop.
You should just assume that when they're in the bathroom, they're probably having a sub or working on some kind of relationship with grackles and raccoons.
You should just assume that's daddy's strategy room.
Yeah, as they say, with every generation, the parenting style switches.
You have a generation of strict parents and then a generation of lenient parents who feel their parents are too strict.
I agree with that, yes.
And now I am the new generation of strict parent.
I do not want my child to think it's okay for them to do anything.
It's not okay.
It's just not okay.
Is it guilt?
Is it self-doubt?
Is it fear?
Is there one governing thing that you've instilled in her with terror?
Guilt, self-doubt, or fear?
No, none of those things.
I don't want her to feel guilty or have any self-doubt or any fear of anything other than me.
It's strictly fear of dad.
She's passing everything through a dad filter.
Yeah, it's just like, what's dad going to say about this?
Dad, yay or nay?
I can't think of a possible way that could go wrong.
No, it's foolproof.
Even if you're killed by the ravens at some point.
Now, they'll probably come in, like with the mob.
They might come in and actually want to take care of her.
I don't think they always do that 100%.
Yeah, but the ravens are going to recognize, because I'm already introducing her to all the birds.
Does she know that?
She has never known a world in which she was not being held up to birds and told to say hi.
So then the birds know that she's the heir apparent.
But don't get too friendly, right?
Don't go nuts.
Yeah, you're not going to touch the birds.
They don't want that.
You don't want that.
Don't they have dander?
birds yeah they do have dander but i'm not talking about there are no birds in my house except for the owls that periodically appear in my bed i i've got that on a card here i wanted to i think well god john there's so much we should really have we should have a probably in addition to hitler and stuff a couple other properties i think the owls i mean aren't owls in any form and i understand that these are real owls that were really there i understand that right um
You don't think that that's telling you something or pushing you in a direction.
It seems to me this is your, I know you're not a papist, but it seems to me this is your 40 days in the desert type situation.
This is the Damascus road for me.
But I do not, but unlike a lot of prophets, unlike a lot of people to whom Jesus appears on the Damascus road, who will go unnamed in this podcast.
Mm-hmm.
I am not somebody who's going to sit down and write it all down thinking that I know what it is.
Well, what good is that?
I'm not some Muhammad-like person who's going to write a Koran.
Oh, God.
I am a... You're going to get so much Abrahamic cosplay email.
You know what?
I'm going to get a lot of letters.
I'm going to get a lot of letters from people who are very, very...
angry that i took muhammad's name in vain none of whom are actually muslims they're just a bunch of liberals from bellingham who are upset on behalf of our non-muslim what could be more ping pong than apologizing than protecting somebody on their behalf what could be what could be more ping pong it is the it is the ultimate condescension and it is at the core of our of our leftist society now
But I don't want to get into that.
Okay.
I do not know what the owls want, and I am not speculating.
I'm waiting.
I'm just waiting.
John, I have to tell you, for somebody whose pillow is turning to owls, you seem very, very centered about this entire thing.
Well, it all leads to something.
Yeah.
It has to.
It has to.
I have to understand at this point that I do not have all the information.
It's not that I have stopped researching.
No.
And all the more reason that I am looking birds in the eye because maybe one day one of those eyes is going to flash.
I'm going to need – John, I'm going to need an extra desk because I just had a flash of something like enlightenment where I'm seeing a thread here.
You're open to bronies.
You're looking at birds.
That's right.
Right?
You're checking for spooks in the corners.
That's correct.
You've got the owls there, and they're not talking to you because owls don't talk, but they're there.
John, I think somewhere in this is a through line.
We've got to keep doing this show because I think we're going to – I don't know.
You're going to be fine either way.
You have grackles, crows, and ravens to protect you.
But I think there's something here that can help a lot of people.
You have clearly tapped into or been tapped into by something very significant.
Sure.
Well, my feeling is... Do you feel that when you walk around, do you feel that gravitas?
You go to the mall, and do you feel that sense that there's a weight on your shoulders, that you could be a very important character?
Well, since I was very young, I understood that I was an important character, but I never felt it as a weight.
It is a responsibility.
Maybe the weight is a gift.
The weight is a gift.
Oh, my God.
Sometimes when I cross the street, I haven't...
I'm not going to say much about this.
A friend who's not me sometimes crosses the street knowing that it's going to be a tough street, knowing that it is near the time of day.
Usually, you know, I'm in the western part of town.
People going down the street.
The sun's in their eyes.
They're blowing through stop signs.
Tough street.
Doesn't hurt to have a handful of pennies.
Uh-oh.
Yeah.
Oh, if they're driving real fast the other direction.
You hit them with a handful of pennies?
I wouldn't.
Wow.
Now, if that happened to you... Oh, my God.
Right.
Oh, my God.
Well, if somebody threw a handful of pennies at my car, I would pull up the emergency brake and do a four-point slide stop and be out of the car before the car had stopped moving.
Good luck chasing through the park.
Because you know what I mean?
You know what I'm saying?
It's like the Viet Cong.
They know where the rabbit holes are.
And you're sitting there in your white pickup truck going, who threw a penny at my car?
Because that's how people who drive cars sound.
You throw a penny.
You don't throw a handful of pennies.
I don't throw anything, John.
Oh, I see.
But your friend.
The friend who's not me.
Throws one penny.
I think, you know, and here's the thing.
You get off that one of the streetcars, you know, the streetcars that you leap out of.
Sure.
Now, if you did your leaping exit, you might very well get hit by some dick because the law is so clear here, and this is a good law.
The law is when that train stops, you stop.
You do not cross the plane of the back of the train.
You're in front of your car.
You sit there like a fucking gentleman, and you wait until every person, every old lady, every little aged man and his adorable daughter get off of that train, and you sit there, and you don't make a face.
But people don't do this.
Well, this is why I think pedestrian pennies should be a thing.
Okay.
I think if you do that, if you start even sliding up when the doors aren't closed, you should wait until the train's gone, I think.
Here's a technique that I have used to great effect over the years.
Pedestrian pennies.
And it's in the family of throwing the penny.
And that is, if a car goes by you too closely, if a car takes a corner and you were about to step off the sidewalk to cross the road and suddenly this guy is right in front of you...
If you kick the car really hard and then act like it hit you.
Act like an injury.
Are you talking about a hood, a trunk, a quarter panel?
Hit a quarter panel.
Quarter panel is good.
If you can hit a trunk, though, they didn't, you know what I mean?
They sped by.
They're busy not looking at you because they're embarrassed.
Right.
Right?
The thing is, a trunk, it's like a kettle drum.
But if you kick a quarter panel, you can actually do some damage.
Oh, you mean like on a quarter panel of the last quarter century?
Oh, that's a joke, those quarter panels.
You go boom, and then they look in their rearview mirror, and you are grabbing your leg and writhing in agony.
Are you making this face?
Oh, oh, oh.
Half the time the car will stop and the person will get out and say, oh my God, I'm so sorry.
And then you can like do the walk it off.
Like, so it's cool.
It's cool.
Just watch where you're going.
And then, yeah.
Walk it off.
But other times, you know, they speed off and then it haunts them.
I would never try to defend pedestrian pennies.
I don't need to.
I've never done it.
But here's what I will tell you, John.
I do not know a lot about life.
You know about life and I hope you'll tell me if this resonates with you.
There are very few people who do a bad thing one time.
Oh, that's absolutely true.
I think if you're going to go out and make yourself a lady horse, I don't think you do that one time.
Yes, of course.
Let's be honest.
You have to have a first time.
I'm just saying that for all kinds of bad diddling in particular, I don't think you just go, oh, well, that's fine.
I've had my six pack and now I'm done.
No, no, no, no.
You don't.
You escalate.
You escalate.
It goes higher.
You read any of these books about the Quantico, which I think might be a bit of a scam, but you read about the Quantico, you read about the studying, you read about the Lecter, and you learn that it goes up and up and up.
Again, we're back to Chikatilo.
But it is possible, I believe.
Now, this is one of the big problems of growing up is you want to say it is possible to learn and grow because you want to be able to learn and grow yourself.
Right.
But at the same time, you have to look at other people and realize that it's very unusual that someone learns or grows as they get older.
Really?
And in my own case, back in the soul patch days, I was kicking people's quarter panels and pretending that they'd run over my leg.
Well, of course you were.
You were kicking truth to power.
But I don't do it anymore because I've learned and grown.
And so when a car cuts me off now, I just, I just go, you will get yours down the road when the birds come to peck out your eyes.
In the meantime.
Are you really, are you thinking, are you, so first of all, kudos.
It sounds to me like you've evolved.
Thank you.
And you got rid of that fucking beard.
I used to have one of those.
I looked so stupid.
I have a photograph.
I had one in the early two thousands.
It was execrable.
It looked awful.
You look great in a mustache.
I don't know why you don't wear one.
That's not even, that's not even funny.
It's not even a joke.
No, no, no.
Your mustache is spectacular.
You look like the prince in Princess Bride.
You know, when I was younger... The Dread Pirate Roberts.
You know, when I was younger, I was told by many people that I looked like a cross between him and Michael Palin, which thank you and thank you.
Now I'm hideous.
Now I'm a grotesquery.
If you grew a mustache right now, you would look immediately like the Dread Pirate Roberts who had aged a little bit.
Yeah, except the catcher's mitt.
um i uh boy there's levels to this john there's so many levels to this i you know i'm i guess i shouldn't really push your buttons about this animal issue because it's probably something you can't talk about but i'm fascinated by that i'm trying to grow as a person john roderick i'm trying first of all you know what i mean it's like a mountain in muhammad no offense but like you start out and you're kicking fenders in a soul patch right then you go a little further you go well fuck you the birds are going to peck your eyes out one day i want to reach the point in life
And I've given up on the Buddhism.
I don't have time to sit.
I can't do it.
No, I love the Buddhism.
It's boring.
It's all yoga.
It's got a lot of rules.
It's got a lot of rules.
Well, all religions do.
That's the thing about them.
Okay, so anyway, I, and so you know where I want to evolve to the point where, and this is the phrase, this has become, it's certainly not a mantra, but it's something I think about in the phrase is, stupid's not allowed to stick to me.
Oh, hey, wow, you're stupid Teflon.
Yeah, I would call that Dr. Philism.
I'm stupid Teflon.
Stupid's not allowed to stick to me.
That might be the awesomest rapper name ever.
Stupid Teflon?
MC Stupid Teflon.
Look at me and you can see stupid's not allowed to stick to me.
What am I, fat boys?
What the fuck kind of rapping is that?
I don't know.
It sounded like something that would be happening at the gathering of the Juggalos.
It sounds like something that would happen at a corporate event where they go, let's bring up Bob Henderson to do his rap.
Okay, we're talking about the hold steady.
Oh, man, that's going on the card with the religion.
I'm cutting all of that out.
You say another bad word about the cold steady and you're going to have a raccoon in your house, my friend.
I can't believe you aren't into that.
There could be a raccoon in here already.
Don't you like Bruce Springsteen?
Don't.
Okay, so I'm trying to grow as a person.
I like him personally.
I think he's a super guy.
I was on an airplane the other day and the guy next to me was like,
So what do you do?
And I'm like, I'm a musician.
He's like, oh, really?
What kind of band are you in?
I'm like, it's a rock and roll band.
He's like, you mean like the boss?
I got on the wrong fucking airplane.
How early in the flight?
Right away.
And then he digs in his backpack.
He's there with his daughter.
His daughter's like 13 years old.
He has no idea how lucky he was to have her there.
The daughter's looking out the window the whole time.
He digs in his backpack and produces a fistful.
I'm talking about a fistful.
of uh slim jims he's like want a jerky and i feel like i gotta take a jerky off this guy it's it's a gesture it's a human gesture on an airplane to offer somebody was it a branded uh macho man rainy savage style slim jim no no no it was just a it was just a regular slim jim was it like a trader joe's jerky
It was not a Trader Joe's jerky, though.
It was a proper, like, full of chemicals and whatever those awful... Sweet and salty, like for real, like teriyaki kind of jerky.
Yeah, but not even teriyaki flavored.
This was like standard form nitrate impregnated jerkies.
Did you eat it?
Yeah, I ate like a half a dozen of them because he kept, every time I would finish one, he'd be like, what another jerky?
As he's talking to me about the boss.
Oh, John, that sounds like a jam up.
As someone, as people who are into the boss do, where they're talking to you about the boss as though they are Mormons and you are Mormons, but you have never heard of Mormonism.
You obviously understand and are just as big a fan, but they're also repeating everything just in case you didn't know that Nebraska was his best record.
And I'm sitting next to this guy.
He's a perfectly nice guy.
I kept trying to steer the conversation to Dylan because he also wanted to talk about Dylan, but he kept bringing it back to the boss, and I just don't have that much to say about the boss.
I'm not opposed to the boss.
Well, I mean, I'm going to change the subject to the best of my ability here.
I am opposed to it steady, though.
which is that, you know, I really don't like steer the conversation guy and it happens on planes.
And when I'm on a plane, I was on a plane this past week.
And I mean, I, I think it's super important in the first, especially before, Oh my God, before the flight, but especially in the period before the food, really up until just the point of right before landing, we're going to find all this on.
Like you have to throw a shape that you are not going to be the talky person.
You're not going to be receptive that when they go, huh?
SkyMall.
You're not going to respond.
You're not going to move.
You're not there.
You're not there.
But the problem with this flight, it was a flight to San Diego, and I thought I made the category error of thinking that West Coast flights, for me, are all really short.
It's like, I got on a plane, I'll be in San Francisco in an hour or two.
Maybe temporarily.
Yeah.
They're just like, they're just, it's just like, I'm just walking through a door.
Basically I walked through a door onto a, a, a, a metal tube full of long pigs, a fart tube full of long pigs.
I'm going to be on here for a few minutes and then I'm off the other side and I'm somewhere else.
But San Diego is two and a half hours away.
It was a long, it's not a long flight.
San Diego might as well be Mexico.
Yeah.
It's Mexico with volleyball.
San Diego is... Wow.
So boring.
Wow.
It's not even that it's boring.
It's worse than boring because it's boring and also grotty.
Right?
It's also like... Grotty?
Like a crotch?
It's grotty like a crotch.
But it's boring.
Like a nut butter churn?
It's like you walk past these places and you think, there are still bars like that.
Oh, right.
There are still bars like that that aren't in Southern Europe, where people are just that seedy, but also boring.
Oh, that's a terrible combination.
Yeah, seedy is often...
At least in the foyer of interest.
It's like people who steal cheap things.
Exactly.
You know, I mean, am I wrong?
No, that's exactly right.
I read something once.
This was pretty good career advice, I thought, which is, and I broke it.
I've broken it my entire life, but never steal anything more expensive than a pencil where you work.
I think it's true.
I think when you steal, you steal big.
You gotta steal fucking big.
You steal little, you know what I'm saying?
That would be like having a wife that you love and
and, uh, necking with somebody, you know, that's so gross.
Like I personally, I, I have no interest.
I mean, like I couldn't live with myself if I did something like that, but if I were, I'd blow it out.
Oh, I'd fucking blow it out.
You're going to cheat on your wife.
It's going to be at the, it's going to be at the playboy mansion and it's going to be like three days.
Not even the, Oh God, the playboy mansion, man.
Uh, they, they couldn't make my pants move at a place like that.
It would be a lot darker, John.
It would be a lot darker.
Is that right?
It'd be a donkey show and TJ, uh,
That's one of my favorite Hold Steady records.
There's a donkey, and he's up on the stage.
The donkey's up there, and he's filled with rage.
Tijuana.
I'm reading out of our employee handbook.
It's going on the list.
It's going on the list.
They're so good.
Bruce Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band.
Oh, God damn it.
You get an anti-bell for this.
Oh, dead bell.
I have so much to cover.
Okay, so I think people who steal cheap things are tedious.
Yeah.
Right?
And it's petty.
It's petty.
You're like fucking Peter Lorre.
You're like meh, meh, meh, meh, meh.
People who steal big things are petty and small.
You got to really steal big to earn my admiration.
Well, this is something we obviously cannot get into, but you're a wealthy rock star, but getting something, I'm just saying, you're not going to go do a fucking Kickstarter for Super Train.
People are going to see that coming a mile off.
You're going to need some substantial James Bond villain type shit to bootstrap Super Train.
Speaking of which, there's an island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, a five-acre island, uninhabited,
That recently was on the market for $22 million.
And the other day, I read an article in the real estate section of a newspaper that will go unnamed that said that the price of this island had been reduced to $5 million.
Whoa.
This is the island that is over.
That sounds haunted, John.
It's over by Sausalito, like it's between Alcatraz and.
Like over by Angel Island, there's like these little islands.
I remember hearing that there was, for a second I thought you meant the Farallons, which would not be a nice place to live.
But you're saying right in that super expensive Hebraic area near, not Angel Island, but Tiburon, like near Tiburon, that kind of area.
Right.
There's an island for sale over there.
For $5 million.
And it occurred to me that $5 million for a lot of people in San Francisco is just the interest payment on their boat.
I cannot believe that some... What is it called?
Red Rock Island?
I'm going to look this up.
Here it is right here.
Well, I mean, obviously, you're selling past the close.
It's a no-brainer.
I would pick up every island.
If there was an island available, I'd buy it.
Yeah, if I worked for Apple or some other company down there that was paying people a billion dollars.
I love it when I know where the source of your facts come from.
When you have a new file card on some phenomenon based on hearing something from one or two people, I like to know occasionally I will know where that came from.
Anyway.
In this one instance, this island, Red Rock Island, is for sale in San Francisco Bay.
Six acres of rock
And it is now only $5 million.
I can't believe... First of all, I am super mad that I don't have $5 million.
Because I would be buying that island right now.
And what an incredible place for your evil genius... If you had paper mache and five gay men, you could not make a scarier looking villain island than that.
Isn't that an incredible villain island?
It is literally red.
And it looks like from an angle, it looks like a pirate ship.
You would be living on that island, and I think you would build a one-story house with a lot of glass and a helipad, and you would be so evil over there.
I know you're not into the comics and the Avengers, but we should get back to Ant-Man at some point.
But do you think most of that would be subterranean?
I'm just thinking.
Of course.
It would look like a mansion.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
You'd have hundreds of guys all wearing jumpsuits, running back and forth.
Oh, it's a no-brainer.
And you'd have a tube.
You'd have a series of tubes that could get them to various different places.
You could have one that goes to the Whole Foods, probably one that goes to the Goodwill.
It's the only privately owned island in San Francisco.
Is that right?
Are you kidding me?
That's, you know what?
I just, what the fuck is wrong with this city?
Why do I not own this already?
John, there's, there's, there's no, there's no reason.
There's no fucking reason that you should not own this Island.
You know, I understand that you've got what you've gotten and you're sometimes upsotten.
That's right.
But, but this is the, you know what?
You should go, you should go talk to your boss, your, your pseudo boss.
You should talk to your, your contact, your, your field agent.
You should talk to Paul Allen about this.
That's walking around money for him.
What I'm thinking.
He could stake you.
What I'm thinking is we have a lot of listeners to this program.
We have a lot of listeners of this program.
If you say Kickstarter, I'm turning the whole thing off.
What is the right word that I'm looking for?
Constituency.
We have a large constituency.
Is that right?
Would you say that?
I would say.
I'd say that.
And some of those people are software billionaires.
And they're sitting right now in an unfurnished house
on the same couch that they brought from their college dorms, and they're looking up, they have one poster on the wall, and it's a poster of a white Porsche.
It's something by Josh Whedon, I'll bet.
It's from that TV show, Serenity.
They're sitting in their house, and it's one of those houses where the entryway is like three stories tall, but there's no furniture in it.
And they're sitting in a beanbag chair, they're listening to Roderick on the line, and they're thinking, God, I should buy that island for John Roderick.
Yeah.
After they turn the show off and they sit down with their vegan wheatgrass and they listen to intelligent dance music, whatever the fuck that is, they take a moment to think.
They pull out an extremely costly fountain pen that they hardly ever use.
They walk out by the immaculately— It's a gift.
Well, it could be.
Maybe they got it from some of the stock options.
You go out to the pool that you never use, right?
Yeah.
You're basically, what's his name, Benjamin Braddock, right?
You're basically the graduate's dad at this point, even though you're like 20 and you're wearing a fucking hoodie, right?
And so you go and you think to yourself for a minute, you start thinking, oh, I should start a foundation.
I should change the world.
I should make a rubber bracelet.
Fuck you.
Buy an island for John Roderick.
That's right.
That'll change some shit.
Here's how you're going to change the world.
If I had that island, the world would be...
That would be the first sign.
This is your Sudetenland, John.
The thing is you need a foothold.
The thing is this is not – I'm just going to say.
I don't want to say too much here.
This is not going to sustain the level of fucked upness that you're going to be bringing forth with SuperTrain.
And let's be honest.
Right now a train can't get there.
That's an implementation problem today.
They used to think you couldn't fly to Paris.
That's right.
They used to think you couldn't take a train to Paris.
But I don't want to use a rock climbing metaphor.
This is a foothold.
This is a place.
It looks like a fucking pirate ship.
It would not cost.
You know what they do a lot of times?
Are you telling me, if I understand correctly, are you telling me they wanted 20 some million dollars for this and then they busted it down to 5 million?
They call that a distressed property.
This is something they're trying to move.
They probably, you know what?
They probably – not a refi, you know, when people don't pay their mortgage.
Yeah, it's a short sale or it's a repossession.
Yeah, you know, it's a yard possession.
Exactly.
They went and did a yard possession on this.
Now they have to pay the electricity.
They're having to pay for the pirate flag.
Well, there's no electricity out there.
Not that you know of.
Right.
Well, the thing is, I bet you... But who owned it before them?
I bet you, you know, it's been in some family for many, many years.
And I bet you what happened is they go out there and they realize that it's an Indian burial ground or something like that.
They spent the night on the beach one time in a tent.
And in the middle of the night, an entire army of dead soldiers came and spooked them.
And they were like, we can't live on that island.
Let's get out of here.
And they split.
And the island has been undeveloped all these years.
But I feel like my experience...
enables me to go to that island and make a detente, a rapproachment with whatever spooks are there and say, listen, spooks, this island is going to be the headquarters of Supertrain and of an evil empire that I'm building.
Which is not evil.
It's chaotic good.
They're often mistaken for one another.
But I need your help here.
And the first thing we need to do is put the kibosh on some of this spooking and get you back into a comfortable place.
If that means I have to burn some sage, I will.
I'm not going to put up any prayer flags or anything like that.
But if you need a water feature...
Even though we're on an island in the middle of a bay, I'll put up a little drippy water feature if that soothes you, if that calms you.
Give them focus.
And then we can get to work building a network of tunnels and a big sort of like Frank Lloyd Wright style house on the top.
Not Frank Gehry.
Not Frank Gehry.
Oh, God, no.
I don't want it to look like a slinky that somebody stepped on.
In June 2007, Glickman, now a gem dealer in Thailand, What?
Glickman?
Glickman!
Boy, there was a plan in the 80s to cut off the top half of the island.
What a goddamn shame.
Asshole.
Oh, goddammit, John.
I think you're going to have to burn some fucking serious sage.
In the 1980s, the plan was floated.
The plan was floated.
Wikipedia.
But never implemented to remove the top half of the island, which would be sold for highway roadbed construction.
This guy's thinking on a super train level.
The island would then be developed with a 10-story hotel and casino, 10 stories on that island, really?
The Lord.
And a yacht harbor on the Lee, which apparently means north side.
Water and power would be provided.
Connected to the San Rafael Bridge.
Okay.
Okay.
So here we go.
Step zero.
First of all, you've got to get $5 million.
Right.
Plus whatever.
You're going to –
When you have a distressed property, John, a lot of times you can go in – as I understand it, you're a property owner.
I am not.
You go into some place and you say, oh, this seems like a pretty nice place.
Wow, it used to be a lot more expensive.
I'd like you to make some renovations.
I'm just thinking the renovations might not be anything – you know what?
They need to not be things that anyone sees.
But put in a couple of power plugs just to get you started.
If you want to listen to music or you want to be able to heat up a sub –
There might already be tunnels on that island.
I would not be surprised at all.
The thing is, the secret to do this correctly would be that as you're building a network of tunnels...
The Frank Lloyd Wright style house that you build on the top, you make a big show of making it zero emissions.
It's green.
It's a greenhouse.
It's a greenhouse.
And you got solar panels.
You got a solar powered elevator.
So everybody thinks that you are a super good billionaire.
Oh.
Your house is so green that it generates power, and you fucking give it away.
Right.
You give it away.
You give it back to the San Rafael Bridge, which I don't think is a real bridge.
But you have those lines.
You know what?
There's lines there already.
No problem.
We're going to shoot that right back to you.
You're welcome.
That's to you.
That's from us, because we are green, and we have the island in San Francisco Bay, and God bless America.
You could open an educational center there.
Educational center?
The beach is off limits to anyone but seals...
You know, this education center could teach people a lot about the delicate ecosystem of the bay.
It would be really useful if I got a little help here to kind of, you know, booster this up a little bit.
We're going to have kids out here.
We should probably get some fortifications.
There's a network of tunnels.
And the tunnels will get the kids there faster.
You've got to sign forms and ride on buses.
How am I going to get the kids out there?
I want to educate them.
Oh, whoa.
Wait a minute.
Now I'm looking at a picture of this island.
It is right next to the San Rafael Bridge.
People on the San Rafael Bridge can look down into your bathroom in your as-yet-unconstructed house.
Does that change your strategy at all?
Well, I think we would have to orient all of the sort of green technology, the green technology beard, we would have to orient it so that it was visible from the bridge.
So that people could, as they're driving to work in San Rafael or at that prison there, they're thinking, God, that is the type of billionaire man.
Maybe you could have children with a disease come and make a mandala in the side.
Or maybe some kind of a quilt or a mosaic, but something.
I don't think we call them diseases anymore.
I'm not sure what the terminology is.
Oh, sickness tunities?
Yeah, I think they're called abilities now.
Mm-hmm.
Children with abilities.
I'm having a difficult time finding out what kind of fauna you have on the island.
I'm sure they have sea lions.
I'm sure they have cormorons.
I think it's very interesting.
There's a place called Seal Rock, right, where there's lots of seals.
Everything I've seen out in the middle of water in San Francisco Bay has shit tons of stupid animals on it.
I don't see any animals on this, John.
I don't even see any birds.
I think there's something awful on Red Rock Island.
There's something going on.
There's something going on on Red Rock Island.
It's kind of an X-Men joke.
You know what?
What do we have to do to get to Red Rock Island?
Do I have to fly down there right now?
Is that something you could do?
Fly down to San Francisco if you figure out how to get to Red Rock Island.
Here's the thing.
I bet you that there's not – apart from our friend Scott, there's not that many billionaires that would actually today pony up $5 billion plus closing costs, whatever the fuck that means.
Really?
You don't think we have enough listeners who are software billionaires that one of them is going to pony up this money?
So you're taking a different approach.
You're saying based on our sampling size of our vast, vast constituency, there's no reason, there's no fucking reason not to think that one of them has $5 billion in checking right now.
Yeah, $5 billion.
All we're asking for is $5 million.
It's a piece of paper, one cashier's check.
Right.
Now, where are these people based that we want to buy this from?
We should probably find out a little more intelligence.
Is it still Glickman?
Glickman's in Thailand.
He's a gem dealer.
Glickman's dealing gems in Thailand.
Is it still Glickman?
Okay.
Well, I don't know.
But this is stuff... You're in San Francisco.
You need to do the research here.
No, I will.
I'll do some footwork on this.
It seems to me... Here's the other thing, John.
It was $20 million.
I need to just read this one when I'm not talking to you.
But apparently...
Wow, somebody bought the island in 1964 for $49,000.
You spend that on guitar strings.
You spend that on guitar strings in a year.
$49,000.
Your bathtub's going to cost that much, if I can say.
I've spent that much just lighting my cigars with $100 bills.
And you don't even like cigars.
I just light them and I throw them out the window.
Into your money pile.
Which is right next to your cigar house.
$49,000.
$49,000.
Come on.
I've had wheatgrass enemas that cost more than that.
That's good.
That's good.