Ep. 355: "The Lieutenant Colonels of Hell"
hello hi john hi merlin how's it going good how are you pretty good pretty good pretty good i'm a little bit ambivalent oh i mean that's not bad ambivalent i mean that's in the nature of ambivalence i think right no you sound you sound a little bit ambivalent tentative
A little tentative, but, you know, a little tentativeness isn't bad either.
I don't think tentativeness is bad any more than ambivalence is bad.
Oh, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Angels should not be walking around anyway.
Well, that's true.
I wouldn't be.
I wouldn't be.
Were I an angel.
Well, yeah.
Yeah, I think, you know, it's easy enough these days in this economy to overcommit to a feeling.
Huh.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
I admire commitment.
It's something I respect in people.
But I also have a lot of respect.
See, this is the ambivalence.
I also have a lot of respect for people who are just ambivalent or of two minds or maybe six minds.
I don't know.
But I'm pretty good.
Pretty good.
Five by five.
I got no complaints.
Who'd listen?
You know what I'm saying?
Right.
Sure.
Speaking of angels.
Yeah.
And walking around.
Okay.
Do you think of the devil as having wings?
No.
Okay, go on.
I think of the devil as being a very, you know, kind of dark red.
I think he's got facial hair and horns.
Okay.
And a pitchfork and a pointy tail.
Um...
I'm trying to give you my honest first take of this without overthinking it.
You get into the lower level guys.
You get into the lieutenant colonels of hell.
Then you're going to see some wings.
I see, right.
But Satan himself, see, my sense is he lost his wings, maybe?
Had him and lost him?
See, it's a problem because I don't know, not only do I not per se believe this stuff, I don't even know the, how does one say, I don't know the mythology super well.
Sure, sure, sure, sure.
Because it's real confusing.
But what we do know, I think one thing I feel like we can stipulate is that there is a child's idea of a devil.
Maybe you got it from Casper the Friendly Ghost.
Or maybe you got it from another Harvey comic.
Or from having a character sitting on a shoulder or a little face behind.
Right.
Maybe you read the Book of Enoch when you were a little kid.
The Book of Enoch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't think I know that.
Well, I mean, you probably didn't.
I probably didn't.
But, you know, here's the thing.
Even if you don't believe in it, you know it.
Like, I don't believe in snowmen, but I know what they look like.
Hmm.
You don't believe in snowmen?
I don't want to get a lot of email.
I think there's an awful lot of supporting evidence that snowmen exist.
Well, okay.
I could draw a devil on an index card.
That doesn't make him real.
But I mean, a snowman, like I've seen snowmen.
You're saying I should make the distinction between an animated holiday grotesquerie.
Yeah.
Which one are we talking about now?
A snowman or a devil?
A man made of snow.
Right.
Right.
A kind of winter golem.
Winter golem.
To protect your snow village.
Yes.
Now, I think the Jewish peoples, they don't believe in Satan.
I don't know if they acknowledge, they could probably draw Satan.
I don't think Satan is part of their canon.
Do they believe in Satan, though?
The meat-free protein substitute?
Satan.
Satan.
I don't know.
The thing is that Satan is one of the sons of Yahweh.
I mean, he's... Are you sure about that?
Who's the guy who fell off the cloud and got thrown out of heaven?
Well, that's... I mean, it's... Here's what I know.
I know if heaven ain't a lot like Dixie, I don't want to go.
Sure.
Right?
I know that.
Right.
Okay?
Right.
I know you're supposed to live every day like you're dying.
I know that.
Okay?
Sure.
And I know that, according to the Leuven brothers, the wonderful bluegrass singers, that Satan is real.
Sure.
I also know, now I'm going to nip this a little bit from another podcast, but I think the idea of animating a hat into a man made of snow who's entirely aware of his short life is a horrible thing to do to a person, or to a snow.
Sure.
Yeah.
But then you get into here's the thing.
You know that he went down to Georgia, right?
Okay.
Because he was looking for a soul to steal?
Uh-huh.
Okay.
Well, also, he plays a mean fiddle.
He was in a bind because he was way behind and he was looking to make a deal.
Yeah.
And he came across this young man, saw him on a fiddle and playing it hot.
And if memory serves, he sat on a hickory stump and said, boy, let me tell you what.
See?
See?
You know the whole story of the devil.
I bet you didn't know it, but I'm a fiddle player, too.
What?
You?
No.
No.
You wouldn't believe how long I spent with my 45 of C.W.
McCoy's Convoy trying to get all the lyrics to that song written down.
Well, see, it was The Dark of the Moon on the 6th of June.
Oh, yes!
We were in a Kenworth hauling logs.
Yeah.
There was a cab over Pete with a reefer on and a Jimmy hauling logs.
Hauling logs.
Yeah.
We came across this young man sawn on a fiddle and playing it hot.
Now, wait, do you know the lyrics to the ballad of the Red Baron or whatever?
Let's see.
Up in the clear blue skies over Germany.
You can't get it.
I can't get it.
I don't have it.
I lost it already.
Now, the Red Baron, is he a devil?
Oh, well, it depends on who you ask.
Well, his kit, they call it, in football, they call it kit.
Yeah.
His kit.
Now, his kit also, what you call it on a plane?
An aircraft?
Kit?
Kit.
They call it kit.
Like, we talk about, you talk about the coloration.
See, okay, I was reading about George Best and Manchester United, and I was reading about soccer, and I learned that in football, sorry, football, in football, you got, this is true in lots of sport.
Yeah.
You've got your primary uniform, you've got your home uniform, your away uniform, and then you've got something, I think it's called third kit.
Oh, your third kit.
Well, and you can get up to, some places get up to five, but you gots to have, even if you're not, let's not, you know what, don't get me started on the athletic wear industry and the need to create throwback jerseys and stuff.
Just don't get me started on that.
Sure, sure, sure.
I don't want
But you know there's going to be situations.
Now, this happened the other night here in San Francisco, first preseason game.
The Warriors got their ass kicked by the Lakers.
Now, in my opinion, the combination of the way the arena looks, the coloration, the kit of the arena, and the kit of the Warriors and the Lakers, I thought it was a real cock-up, as they say.
Now, were you there?
No, no, no.
We're going to go to a game this week.
But it was real confusing.
Now, the idea of the third kit is that if...
you are so you're gonna go and you're gonna be the away team at a sport right i get this so far so far and if you're if you're uniform colors so far so far so good muzzle top if you're too close to the kit of the home team you got to go to your i think it's called third kit oh third kit so your away kit can't be similar enough to the home team's home kit
without you needing to go to the third kit.
Got to go to third kit, third location.
Because I think what happens is, I think, yes, exactly.
Because if you're yellow and white, and the other guys are yellow and white, you can't just flip it and reverse it, and now you're wearing your pants for a shirt.
That's going to be confusing.
So you might have to go to a tour.
I'm going to find out if it's called third kit.
Anyway, George Best was widely regarded as...
as a Northern Irish fella, probably the greatest football player of all time.
Don't email me.
Right.
But he also had an alcohol problem.
He ended up playing for the Strikers in the 80s.
What about Pele?
Pele?
I didn't go super deep on Pele.
I think Pele is famous for his dribbling, but also George Best, very famous for his dribbling.
Sometimes he would just fuck with the guy.
He'd do a one-two off the guy's shin.
One-two.
Buckle his shoe.
He'd do a one-two off the shin just to fuck with the guy.
Buckle my shoe.
One, two, three, four.
I declare George Best war.
Also a great album by The Wedding Present.
You know, the term kit used that way.
It's a good word.
It's a really good word.
It was introduced to me.
I had a friend back in the 90s.
You know, we all sat around a lot, sitting around in coffee shops.
Yeah, we were writing plays and, you know, thinking about deep thoughts.
And I had a friend, I had a lady friend.
And she was, you know, she was a genius and just like really had it all.
She had it all.
But we were sitting around a table one time and she was complaining about
She was saying, why doesn't anybody, like all you guys, here we all are, it's me and you, you guys, we're all writing plays and we're making music and doing bands.
Why don't any of you guys want to fuck me?
And we were all like, what?
You remember the context for how that came up?
It's just because you're sitting around the internet.
Yeah, we're just shooting the shit.
Which one of you bastards is going to fuck me?
Yeah, and she was like, you know, all you guys, you all got girlfriends.
You're all trying to get laid all the time.
And we were in a cafe, and I think I was dating the girl that was working the cash register.
And the guy over here was dating the girl that was sitting over there looking at us with a glare in her eyes.
And, you know, it was just like the times.
And she was like, what about me?
I'm right here in front of you.
Mm-hmm.
And we were all like, huh?
Was she looking for a fucking or was she just mainly frustrated that it hadn't come up?
Both things.
It was intellectual as well as a physical and psychic endeavor for her.
Yeah.
And I think she's a genius, right?
Boy, yeah.
So, so, you know, like a lot of us, I think in my case, like it had.
And I, you know, it certainly had occurred to me, but it was like, well, you know, we got to keep it on the up and up.
Like I had a band with a, with a lady and I was like, we can never, you know, we should never like kiss her.
Bad idea.
Cause we have, cause our band is too important.
You know, it was like, I had a lot of philosophies, theories about stuff and we're all sitting there and she's like, you know, like, what am I chopped liver?
Hmm.
and there was also a thing like her ex-boyfriend was a friend of ours and i don't think we wanted all that drama and everything anyways no my my friend you gotta get approval just to just to vet your handyman if you pardon my saying let alone you start getting into those band issues with fucking a genius yeah it was crazy christ john but but she's you know she's just like what the fuck what's the you know like yeah yeah yeah clarification
My friend Chris is sitting across the table, and you've met Chris.
You know Chris.
Love Chris.
Yeah, Chris.
Here he was.
Here's the guy, Chris.
Chris is legit funny.
He flew.
Chris flew at a different level.
We're all sitting there.
He leans back in his chair and goes, I'll fuck you.
And she said, yeah, okay, fine, good.
And he was like, I mean, I'll fuck you right now.
And she was like, she said, yeah, well, okay then, right now.
And he was like, great.
And he stood up.
And then she was like, now?
And he was like, yeah, let's get out of here.
And she kind of stood up and we were all like... I'd want to grab a shower if I could.
She was like, huh?
And we were all like, huh?
And Chris was like, come on, let's go.
And she's like, okay.
So she stood up, sort of like flustered now.
And as they walk out the door, we hear him say, let's go get your kid off.
Interesting.
And it was like, get your kid off.
Get your kid off.
Meaning, let's just go, let's go to the nearest location and we'll just get your kit off.
Get, get your, get all the, you know, the, get all your appurtences off, all your, uh, all your bits.
And I was like, get your kit off.
Wow.
I mean, you can, you can imagine.
It scans nicely too.
It's got lots of K sounds.
It does.
Chris is good.
He was really good.
You know, he used to... Oh, boy.
I mean, he was terrible.
We were all... Yeah, you were all pretty bad as people.
And he was horrible, but he was... Was he?
Okay.
No, not horrible.
He was great.
He didn't fucking lay me on request.
I mean, that's better than Uber Eats.
Think about taking one for the team in that way.
I couldn't do that.
Because the thing is, we were all off the hook.
I would need to be rejected for a while before I even thought about it.
I would be really kind of put off by that level of candor.
It ended up later, several years later, she and I finally figured out a way.
Oh.
And we dated.
Okay.
We dated briefly.
Okay.
It was hard because I respected her so much.
It was just like, what are you supposed to do?
I don't know.
Well, you really don't want to fuck that up.
You don't want to fuck that up, though.
You don't want to like, I mean, not to be crass or work blue, but it would be a goddamn shame if you weren't good at it.
Well, or just like, you know.
If she wasn't satisfied with her care, that's going to be a problem.
But the question was always like, well, are we going to...
Are we going to have a relationship?
Are we going to start a museum?
At what point is this going to get in between you and me buying a battleship and converting it into a theater space?
I've had a lot of friendships like that where it's like we're just looking for a project that we can do together.
Let's be honest, with bands sometimes, you're like, hey, we should figure out a thing we can do sometime.
The thing about that is that in some worlds, that thing that, you know, hey, we should think of a thing to do.
In some worlds, that thing is fucking.
Okay.
Is it mainly like the Mediterranean?
Probably the Mediterranean.
Like, why don't we just have sex and have a relationship?
Maybe that should be our profession.
What did he say?
Get your kit off.
Get your kit off.
Anyway, I ended up using get your kit off.
Get your kit off.
Slut my bitch up.
Get your kit off.
Or it was just like, hey, get your kit off.
Get your kit off.
Get your kit off.
So the Red Baron, Baron von Richthofen was his name.
Yeah.
Went down to Georgia.
He was looking for a soul to steal.
Okay.
Yeah, I don't think... I get into a lot of trouble when I talk about certain aspects of the German aristocratic military culture.
Oh, sure.
Because there are a lot of people on the internet that... Hot button issue?
Well, they want to... It's very popular to accuse me of being a both-sides-er because I have all this extra information about like, well... So the Red Baron...
It was like he was a very nice man.
Right, you know.
80-Man tried, 80-Man died.
See?
And then he was shot down by some Aussie with a pea shooter.
Shot down from the ground.
He said, boy, let me tell you what.
Of all the things.
So, just because of his kit, I don't know, Das Kit,
That doesn't make him a devil.
He painted his plane red in homage to the great.
It's Blute and Soil, right?
Blute and Soil, no.
That comes later, right?
Oh boy, you're going to get an email about that one.
That's your email.
You said that.
I don't even have email anymore.
I
Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
No, he painted it red so that he could be seen by his teammates.
It's like the goalie.
You know, the goalie always has a different uniform.
Oh, so if he had a position on an FC, on a football club, as they say, what position would the Red Baron be?
Would he be a center, maybe?
Staker, yeah.
Staker.
You know, all of his compadres, and that's what they called one another.
Das Compadres, yep.
Das Compadres.
They all had planes with lively colors.
What the fuck, World War I?
You could just pick a color for your aircraft?
Before they realized that maybe they should try to hide.
Well, imagine Georgie Bess gets out on that field and he's just wearing a bathrobe.
That'd be super confusing to Arsenal.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Aston Villa?
I don't know.
It'd be confusing to somebody.
Why is Georgie Best in a row?
He's doing a one-two off my shin.
They had those iron crosses on there as distinguished from the concentric circles of the outline.
I love the concentric circles.
Love that look.
You like them because it's a... Let's reminisce into Hawkeye a little bit.
The Who.
I thought you were going to say.
Yeah, Who came up on Spotify?
They got a new jam.
It's kind of confusing.
No, I love that look.
There's a name for it.
The two who.
The two who remaining who.
The legacy who.
Have a new tune?
They got a new tune, the two who.
No.
Yep.
No, no, no.
It wasn't bad.
It's a pretty typical sort of post-1978 who song.
Huh.
Okay.
You're going to get an email.
78, you say.
It's very, very, very, very hard.
The heyday.
Well, you know, they had some good songs for the last 40 years.
Yeah.
Sure, sure, sure.
It's not Pictures of Lily.
No.
It's not a quick one.
No, even a quick one isn't really a quick one.
Wait a minute.
Pump the brakes, Sally.
That's my jam.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I'm not saying a quick one while he's away is not one of the great jams.
That live performance on the Rolling Stones rock and roll thing?
That's exactly what it is.
The Rolling Stones.
They squashed it.
They quashed it.
They said, no one's going to say this.
Everybody knows that story.
Merlin, what we're talking about is that version.
Not only destroyed the Rolling Stones, but it destroyed their own recorded version of it.
That live take is one of the great, most masterful moments in rock.
It's like the homeopathy of rock and roll.
Like you need less than a drop.
You can't even take the original version and you can't put it up on a larger pedestal than it deserves because of that.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
And this is why... Of pure brilliance.
You think so?
Oh, because of Keith Moon.
Yeah.
He's pretty, he seems pretty energized for sure.
It was five in the morning.
You have a lot going on.
They've been up all night, you know?
And, um, this is why the Grammys I think distinguished between like a song of the year and record of the year.
A lot of people don't know that.
Go on.
That's a good distinction.
When I first learned it, I was like, huh, what's all this then?
How come you got a record of the year and a song of the year?
I don't remember which is which.
One is, now see, we're getting into some deeply semiotic stuff.
When we're talking about Georgie Best and the Red and Black Devil playing, we are getting very deep into some Roland Barthes territory here.
Barthes.
Barthes.
Because here's the thing.
What about me?
He said, what about me?
What about me?
Who's going to put you?
Yeah.
He, uh, now wait, who's the one who got hit by, uh, who had the motorcycle?
Uh, so who got hit in the intersection?
Was that, uh, Derrida?
All the French guys get killed.
Thank God.
Am I right?
You got, um, so you got, uh, semiotics is what I'm trying to get at.
In the one instance, and I forget which is which, I'm not gonna look it up.
I'm already looking up Georgie Best Pants.
The, uh, you got, um, I wonder if it's hard for him to Google himself.
He passed a few years ago.
Yeah, his body rejected his liver, his second liver.
Oh, his body rejected his liver.
So think of it this way.
He had away colors.
Let's put it that way.
He got a replacement in Northern Ireland liver, and then it was rejected, and he had to take drugs for that.
And the rejected liver, but, you know, he continues to drink, which is probably not optimal.
Who are we talking about now?
Georgie Best.
Oh, George Best got a new liver.
Well, at the time it was new.
Yeah, yeah.
It was a while back.
Now, I wouldn't try and use it now.
Roland Barthes got killed.
He got killed.
I think Dairy Dog got killed.
But so sure, what happened to him?
So far, so sure.
The, yeah, so anyhow, one record and song, I don't have it in front of me.
One of them is the, here's a tune that's really good that somebody wrote, and you're giving it to the writer.
And then you've got, here's a song that's really good.
And I think that goes to, I believe, you know, it gets so confusing because in movies, everything goes to the producers.
I guess it goes to the artist who recorded it.
But it's the distinction between the song that was written and the song as performed and released.
Right.
Is that right?
You're a musician.
Well, there's the... Within that whole world, the difference between the song as written and the recording, well, that's the whole game.
Oh, absolutely.
Singing out the song.
I sat and listened to probably 11 different versions of The Hole of the Moon by the Waterboys over the weekend.
Ha!
You're laughing why?
I'm laughing because, well, you may have noticed I posted two different versions of Pretty in Pink the other day.
I saw The Crescent.
You saw The Hole in the Moon.
You saw Brigadoon.
Last record before the guy left to start World Party.
i liked that band and i liked that song and it's interesting that you had found 11 different versions of it and what did you discover in uh this deep dive well you know it's interesting um i am a fan of spotify um and spotify has started doing they'll do interesting things like bubble up things that thinks you're going to be interested in so there's something called release radar where it'll say like hey here's new music for
recently released music that we think you'll like.
Then they've got one called Discover Weekly.
Discover Weekly is usually a ton of stuff I already know, but I go, hey, it's a That Dog song.
That's cool.
I like them.
I totally know that song.
A song from the recently re-released Replacements, Don't Tell a Soul Record.
That's a good song.
Now they've done these other things.
They've got one... I forget what it's called.
I'm not going to look it up.
Here's a song you've listened to on repeat a lot.
Which is actually, to me, knowing my personality, you know how I am?
Yes.
That's a real good indicator.
Because you know there's going to be some Everlong in there.
You know there's going to be some GBV in there.
Everlong by the Foo Fighters?
Yeah, it's probably maybe my favorite song.
You know, it's David Letterman's favorite song.
I know.
You know the story?
between uh oh because he was like came back from the death or something came back from south america they left their south american tour to come and play it and then paul paul with some fucking sweet filter string section in the middle fuck can you imagine love the man but he's got to stop playing over the songs don't play over everlong you're just playing a chord you're hitting a pedal the you know pedal in the piano sense and just playing a big chord oh
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bermuda.
Funny, funny kind of place.
Oh, holy night.
Nutty, nutty kind of place.
Bananas.
Bermuda.
So anyway, you get the song.
You got this guy over here.
All right.
You know, we got no record.
Sure.
Georgie Best of Way colors, the Red Baron.
So I think even if you are a non-religious or irreligious person, it's difficult to avoid a lot of the kit.
of religions and i don't want to go too deep on any given religion or or or a faction or denomination but like you know like my uh my lady friend of yeah 20 years she's uh she's from heathens she oh yeah she didn't have a lick of the lord in her life not a bit of it not a bit of it and so you know as you know she doesn't get my joke sometimes which is which is you know a blessing as they say jokes yeah
It's a blessing.
Bless her heart.
I got so much good Leviticus material.
Oh, my God.
They're so repetitive about shrimp.
We get it.
Shrimp.
No.
No buggery or shrimp.
You know, it is said that the reason for that is because nobody wants to eat shrimp in a desert.
It's a bad idea.
Don't eat shrimp in a desert.
He was looking for a soul to steal.
Don't get sushi in an American state that doesn't touch the ocean.
Unless you're in Chicago.
If you're eating shrimp in the desert, you might be
I forget where we were going with this.
So anyway, I think you get exposed.
What?
You do?
You get.
The point is you get exposed to devils and angels.
There's only three named angels.
Three named angels.
There's only three named angels, I believe.
Moroni.
Moroni.
In the Bible.
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
Old and New Testament.
Everybody knows Gabriel, right?
Gabriel.
Gabriel's the go-to angel.
Call him Gabe.
Gabe.
Gabe.
Who's the other one?
Who are the other two?
I know this.
Now, what's the difference between an angel and an archangel?
Do you know that?
It's sort of like between a count and a viscount.
A god and a demigod.
Like a duke and a... A duke and a hog.
Flash!
I would just like to welcome anybody out there for whom this is your first episode of Roderick on the Line.
Thank you for visiting with us today.
Nice to have you here with us.
I'm sure that you'll forge a lifelong connection with us.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
Third Colors.
They call it Third Colors or Third... So officially they call it, oh, see, here you go.
This is the violence inherent in the system.
On the Internet Science site, it resolves to, after disambiguation, it resolves to Third Jersey.
Oh, third jersey.
Third jersey, alternate jersey, third kit, third sweater, or alternate uniform.
I thought third jersey was the area around Trenton.
You're thinking of the Democratic group, I think.
Is it Third Way?
Is that what it's called?
The Third Way.
I remember the Third Way.
Remember how that was going to work out?
The third way.
Let me remember the third way for just a second.
No, no, no, please, please, please, please, please.
Don't do that.
Don't do that.
Okay, so closing that third kit.
Shut the third way down.
I think it is very interesting, though, that you would get to choose your own colors for stuff.
Now, what about, isn't there some kind of a turns out about the color color?
of uniforms in the war against the states it was called war between the states the war of the rivers and cities what do they call it you're talking about northern aggression right you're talking about the gray the grays and the blues yeah wasn't there some kind of uh economic materialist component to uh how the different colors got chosen yeah the south see the south had all of the uh they had all of the the the cotton cotton but they didn't have any of the indigo
And the North had all the indigo, but they didn't have any cotton.
Oh, it's a Reese's Peanut Butter type situation.
Right.
And so when the North wanted to buy the South a birthday present, they sold their indigo to buy a cotton gin.
And the South sold their cotton to buy an indigo pump.
And then it was like they were embarrassed, but also it reaffirmed their love for one another.
And that's what brought the union back.
When you did that, if you were doing that in an 1860s, would you would you give a gift receipt with that?
Would you just so that you could?
Nope, you don't do that.
No, no, no.
We were still arguing about whether or not there should be money at that point.
There was a lot of arguments about a lot of stuff.
Yeah, that's right.
And so gift receipts, I feel like that's a pretty new... Do you give a gift receipt?
Never.
I keep a gift receipt.
I will retain a gift receipt for a period of time.
But I don't believe in returning things.
Well, I would like to think it's one of the great flaws of my character.
You've never returned a gift.
Not never, but don't love it.
Don't love returning stuff.
I say major twice, cut once.
So I do my research on the front end, make sure it's what I want.
And if it's not fucked up... What do I want?
If it's not fucked up, you know, if it's fucked up and not what I ordered, that'll make me sad sometimes.
But I'm not somebody who goes like, oh, I thought this would be more indigo.
But without revealing anyone by name, have you ever received a gift that you were like, ugh, and took it back?
Not in the modern era, for sure.
Would you put a gift that you didn't like on a shelf or in a box?
Would you give it to a fox?
I would take the gift.
I like most gifts.
I do really, I buy so many things for myself.
I lack very little.
What if someone gave you a book by Tony Blair on the third way?
Would you give it, would you regift it?
Or would you put it on the bookshelf?
I'd probably put it on the bookshelf.
That's a really good... Here's another one that's kind of weird.
When we adopted our cat a few years ago, the cat was brought home.
It's hard to believe it's been that long.
It's been a while.
When the cat was brought home and the cat's items, there were a few items of the cat that they gave to us when we took the cat off their hands.
So they needed a box in which to put that.
The box in which they put that...
was a box of Donald Trump books.
Now, I've given this a little bit of thought, because at first I thought, huh, this came from a box of Donald Trump.
My first thought, because I'm a bad person, was, wow, I guess these chodes are those kinds of people that buy a bunch of books, and then, you know, to support somebody, you know, or to support the band kind of thing.
Oh, I see what you mean.
But then, you know what?
I took a moment, I stepped back, and I said, don't be like that.
What is the more, if we apply Boxam's razor to this, what we're going to come up with is, nah, nah, nah, Costco.
Huh?
Because what happens at Costco?
Costco, Costco.
Well, just because, yes, but how do you get your Costco things from the belt to your automobile?
Do you put it in a bag?
No.
Would you pack it with a hag?
No, you put it in a box, and the box is provided by Costco.
It's a box that could have been for lettuce.
Now, if that had been a lettuce box, would I be judging them the same way?
I think not.
Here's what you have to remember.
That is the number one way that tarantulas get into the United States.
Oh, God.
Banana boxes.
So whenever Costco puts your books in a banana box, check that thing for tarantulas.
Well, I don't want to get too into it yet this minute, but we adopted a new animal.
Tarantula?
No ranchos.
No, we adopted a new animal friend late last week.
Who you did?
You and your family.
Our family did that.
And we now have, again, a rescue.
We have adopted a large male bearded dragon.
This is real.
I saw this on the internet.
It was fucking real as hell.
You got a bearded dragon.
You got a lizard.
I'm not a good negotiator.
I negotiated down from Pembroke Welsh Corgi.
This is not a lizard.
Now, let me just clarify.
This is not a lizard like a gecko that goes in a terrarium.
This is a lizard that, like you feed, it's big enough that it could eat like a rat.
It's in an enclosure.
The enclosure is called a vivarium, which I think is a terrible name.
But it could eat a mammal.
Well, yeah, I mean, sure.
Well, I mean, I don't know.
I'm still getting to know him, but he's real big.
Does he want to eat dragonflies?
What does he want to eat?
He's not drinking milk out of a bowl.
If you're curious, you make him a lot of salads.
We make salads for him.
See, the thing is, he's still very new in the house and like everybody.
He hasn't learned the rules yet.
Well, I mean, think about how you are with your house, right?
Now imagine you're in a 40-gallon vivarium.
He's still getting a lay of the land a little bit.
Did you reinflate that old guest bed that you used to have Eric Carson sleep in?
No.
The one that turns into a taco at 2 a.m.?
That's a bad, bad.
That is a bad thing.
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3301.
So what is, let me ask first, let's start at the beginning.
He eats vegetables, he eats mealworms.
So he's a vegetarian or he's an omnivore?
Oh, so he's an omnivore.
Yeah, yeah.
Boy, I'm suddenly way far off why I was telling this story.
The reason I told this story is that there was suddenly a weird animal in the tank.
And we were like, what?
Why is there another animal in the tank?
And it was like a little roach.
And I, see, I'm good at this.
This is like the Donald Trump book all over again, right?
So I'm thinking, no, the nice local pet store that put it together for us, put this kit together, this bit of kit, put that together for us, probably a roach snuck in because they have open containers of insects.
Roaches sneak in.
One of the things about roaches.
You've got to know that about class roaches.
Yeah, yeah, no, so that was the whole point of the story, but now let's move on to the lizard.
Hold on, hold on.
Did the roach sneak in?
Is the roach a tarantula of the lizard's banana box?
So if we did, so roach is tarancho, as vivarium is to banana box.
Okay.
Right.
Oh, okay.
Is that true?
Or was the roach placed in the banana box by the pet store to give the dragon something to do?
Like you're saying like a Trojan vivarium or no, not maybe not that, but maybe like here it's a snack.
No, no, no, no, no.
Cause he was, he was under separate cover.
He was under separate cover.
We had him in an AirSats box.
Now, that was a different box, too, and it was not Donald Trump books or bananas.
But I think that was part of what probably traumatized him a little bit.
But he's doing fine.
I'm watching him on a remote camera right now.
He's just real chill.
We got him in a hammock.
He's just sitting in a hammock and looking around.
You are watching Your New Dragon.
Yeah.
on a remote camera while the dragon swings in a dragon hammock.
He's not swinging.
He's still real chill.
He's in a hammock.
He dropped a duke twice, and he has had a little bit of salad, but he's really still adjusting.
He really likes to be over on the cool side.
He's kind of at an angle.
I can send you a photo if you want.
He's kind of at an angle, kind of hanging off the hammock.
There's a hot side and a cool side?
There's a hot side and a cool side.
He's like a McDLT.
McDLT?
Well, we bought him a basking rock.
So there's a hot, you got a hot lamp?
I got a hot lamp, got a UV lamp, got a basking rock, got a vivarium, got a hammock, got three different sticks, got two bowls.
How does he get in and out of the hammock?
I have a hard time getting in and out of the hammock.
Oh, brother.
No, no.
I'm not even, well, I guess.
Hammocks, hammocks are dairy furniture and I avoid them.
But we know from watching many, many YouTube videos that a beardy likes him or her a hammock.
They like to climb.
We call them beardies?
I guess.
I don't love the name that he came with, but I'll probably adapt.
Is it Gandalf?
What's the name?
I'm not going to tell anybody.
It's, you know, OPSEC.
Come on.
No, no.
When it's time.
Well, it's already fucking weird enough as it is to talk about anything in your goddamn life.
Melvin the dragon.
But if they learn his true name, then they'll be able to steal his wizard lizard powers.
Sure, they can say it three times and conjure him.
So wait a minute.
Who was the prime mover on the dragon adoption?
uh, to quote Bill Keene, not me.
So now wait, how does a family, how does a normal American family, let's say, let's say within the, where the dad doesn't get a vote on things, that kind of a family within the borders of, of, of normal American family, your family certainly is in there somewhere.
Right in the heart of it, but like, you know, the, the borders are pretty wide.
Uh, and, uh, so here's a normal American family going through their day, uh,
How do they find their way to a place where a dragon would need to be adopted in the first place?
How do you even find a place where you meet someone coming through the rye who says, boy, I need to find a home for this dragon?
And you're like, hey, let's have a family conference.
In the great play, Equus, Peter Schaefer says, moments snap together like magnets.
Right.
And that's how you end up fucking a horse.
Let's be honest.
And that's that's really life in a lot of ways.
And and so I say I'm a bad negotiator.
I don't want to get too far into it, but there's been.
Are you the lady horse in this story?
Oh, I'm so the lady horse.
Just saddle me up, saddle me up and give me a horse apron.
I – so there's been consideration of a second pet for a while.
And I negotiated down from –
Negotiate it down from high-impact mammal.
But it seems to me like the worst pet, the one right at the top of the list of worst pets.
The apex shit pet.
And do not write me about this.
No.
But it seems to me that the apex shit pet is a cockatiel.
They're such assholes.
You would have to have the inner strength of a Beretta just to deal with a fucking bird.
There's a bird three doors down from our house, and you know how I know?
Because I hear it every day going, and I'm just like, holy shit, you brought that into your house and you pick up its excrement?
What decision, what chain of poor decision-making brought you to that?
This is the thing, right?
What a piece of shit pet.
Cockatoo or a cockatiel?
Either one.
Either one.
And I know there are people listening to the show right now who are looking over lovingly at their cockatiels.
Here come the bird people.
And a single tear is forming in the corner of their eye and they're like, but, but.
But tiger's different.
Yeah.
But below that, you're saying that a mammal, for instance, one that might be a mammal that would be beloved by the Queen of England, is higher up on the shit tier pet.
It's like an engineering problem, John.
Do you have any idea what I spent on this goddamn cat?
Do you have any idea?
Every time I take it in, it has to have more teeth removed.
Because you never should buy a smushy face.
Ask me if I wanted a cat.
It's the number one rule.
Oh, my God.
A cat with a full face, a whole face.
I'm like Sisyphus pushing a Cassandra up a hill.
I know what I'm in for, and I don't prefer it.
But I don't get a vote so much.
We almost end up with a guinea pig.
And I said, that is very near the apex shit pet.
I know people who turn a room in their house into a room where the guinea pig eats their shits everywhere.
Rip.
Rip.
I love guinea pigs.
Oh, they're such bullshit pets.
Guinea pigs are great pets as long as you domesticate the guinea pig from birth.
Oh, you got to break it.
Yeah, you don't want to get a guinea pig that has ever met another guinea pig.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
To think that you are the big guinea pig.
Oh, okay.
All right.
That makes sense.
Guinea pig is like tofu.
It will take on the flavor of whatever it's cooked with.
It's like Satan.
It's like Satan.
Yeah.
So if you have a guinea pig.
Soy sauce on a guinea pig.
No, no, no.
Don't cook the guinea pig.
If you raise a guinea pig with a kitten, the guinea pig will think it's a kitten and the kitten will think it's a guinea pig.
Whoa.
It's like it's a psyops.
Is this speculation or do you feel like this might be a thing?
I have done this.
You know, I kid, but I don't hate guinea pigs.
But, like, I'm also very, like, I look at the goldfish situation.
And if you look at these, you know, don't email me.
The food or the pet?
Well, pets are food.
Pets are meat.
No, I'm talking about goldfish.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry.
You have a daughter.
I have a daughter.
No, no.
Pepperidge Farm.
Yeah, fish.
No, no, no.
No.
I look at the tradeoff for myself.
Please don't email me.
Literally.
Seriously.
I will throw my computer into the sun if you email me about any of this.
And you'll be banned from the show because I will have your IP address and I will ban you from listening to any podcast ever.
Not just my own.
I have friends who make apps.
If you email me about pets, you will never hear another piece of audio in your entire life.
I have that power and I will wield it.
I've been super clear.
I've been very nice about this.
The trade-off for myself of what you get out of a pet fish.
Give me a fucking break.
Really?
Do they die?
You get attached to, like, I guess.
Like, when I was a kid, I had a goldfish named Goober.
Goober died.
And then he's named after George Lindsay from the Andy Griffith Show.
Sure, Goober.
Which is funny because I was saying to my lady friend yesterday that the dragon is a lot like Otis the Drunk.
I think eventually he'll be able to let himself out.
You know what I'm saying?
Come in and sleep it off.
Have you heard from other dragon owners?
I mean, a little bit, yeah, on the internet.
I haven't sought it greatly.
You know me, I like to read a book.
I'll read a book, I'll watch some YouTube videos.
The pet store people are great, man.
They've been so nice about this.
Okay, I'm sorry to just keep jumping in here.
Tuesday afternoon.
You made it sound like adopted, like somebody left this dragon at a bus station, but you went to a pet store and bought this dragon.
Yes and yes.
The dragon had been turned in by a former dragon companion.
And this happens sometimes with an animal friend.
Somebody gets a dragon and they can't.
And they can't, don't, won't want to deal because they have sense.
And so there's a quarantine, Q-U-A-R, and quarantine for a couple, three weeks, something like that.
It hangs out in the store.
And they got real attached to him at the store.
They like him.
You could tell.
They like this little guy.
And so we'd gotten up to this.
So this is all my kid has talked about.
for a long time.
The dragon!
Yeah, well, I mean, they are very, very cool.
But how did she get introduced to the idea that there was such a thing as dragon ownership?
This is so complicated, John.
Just, like, imagine trying to negotiate, like, a meal with a child.
Now take that and turn that into, like, a two-month project about an animal.
And I'm just trying to walk away from the corgi thing.
Because when you get an animal like that, it changes everything.
She's savvy enough to have threatened a corgi to get a dragon.
See, I don't want to get too far into this, except to say I'm the odd man out.
Literally... Her plan B... It's not just her.
...was a crazy dragon.
And I'm not going to provoke the other...
members of my household by naming names except to say that i was the one who was reluctant to pet any further i know your lady friend pretty well you you you you provoke your own life friend and i'm wondering fuck me gently where the where she got the idea of a dragon
I mean, where does anybody get anything anymore?
So Tuesday afternoon, I pick my kid up at school.
And she's like, you think we could go to that one pet store that we know about?
And I was like, you know what?
We could.
Let's go.
Let's go.
I was like, maybe I'll call them and see if they got any bearded dragons.
And she's like, no, no, no.
Because she doesn't.
Any contact with people is like a very fraught thing for her.
And I was like, no, no.
Forget it.
Forget it.
Get in the lift.
We're going to go to the place.
We go to the place.
Long story short, we walk in.
Yes, they have over here in this tank, they have two babies.
And they're so cute.
They're really little.
They got two baby beardies here.
And over here, they've got a speculated to be approximately four-year-old bearded dragon.
There were baby dragons.
That's over here.
and then there was a dragon with a single tear running down its cheek that had been... This is a very chill pet.
Sad dragon.
Well, no, no, no.
So anyway, but basically we were like, whoa, that guy.
That guy is really cool.
No, but see, you're going to get me in trouble.
You just say words on the internet and you don't listen to podcasts.
You don't know what you sound like.
I know what I sound like.
Can you imagine having to live with that?
and they took they took him out of the tank and she got to hold him and he starts doing this he starts climbing he starts climbing up her arm and under her shoulders he's just like he's making this face he's just kind of looking around and we're like oh my god that is actually an extremely cool animal does he have eyes that move independent of one another not full on like um oh not geckos what's the other one that does that
It's not as much as a, what's the one we're thinking of?
What's the other kind of lizard that does that?
Yeah, the one that has eyes that look like barnacles.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, no, not as much.
I'll send you a photo.
I'll send you a photo.
So he's looking around.
And so, long story short, yada, yada, I put down a deposit.
Is he flicking his tongue?
Oh, he flicks his tongue.
I don't think that these are cheap.
It was less costly, far less costly than I expected.
Here's some YouTube videos you want to search for.
You can go to Google Images and search for bearded dragon cat friends.
Okay, see, that's the thing.
That's just exactly like raising a guinea pig to think it's a cat.
I bet you could raise a cat to think it was a dragon.
I bet you could raise a dragon to think it was a cat.
If you wanted enough, you could probably raise anything to be anything.
Have you ever seen the videos of the cat and the owl that are best friends?
Oh, I would love that.
I love owl videos.
Google cat best friends with owl.
Yeah, owl friends.
And you will see a cat and an owl that love nothing more than to play with one another.
I saw a duck and a Shiba Inu yesterday that was super cute.
The duck puts its bill into the curly tail.
A duck and a Shiba Inu?
Shiba Inu, you know, like a doge dog?
Doge dog.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, sure.
Sure.
Sure.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Much, much, much surprise.
Yeah.
Much dog for Bitcoin.
Okay.
All right.
Oh, look at this.
It's so cute.
Look how little it is.
God, where do people get all this music?
Okay.
The other one to search for for videos, look for a bearded dragon eating a blueberry.
How much does a bearded dragon weigh?
Very, very little.
What are they made of inside?
What is dragon meat?
Dragon made of dragon.
It's very, it weighs far less than a pound.
It's like a sixth of a cat.
Wait, but it's big.
I know.
I know.
But you pick it up and you're like, ooh.
And you do this thing, ooh.
And you're doing the thing like you're testing out the weight.
You're like, ooh.
This is lighter than I expected.
Do they have hollow bones or something?
Hollow bones.
It is a bearded dragon weight.
I think it's six tenths to a pound is the usual thing.
Bearded dragon.
Bearded dragon goes crazy for blueberries.
Look at that.
Look how cute it is.
0.62 to 1.1 pounds.
This bearded dragon is hauling ass.
Oh, they haul ass.
Sometimes they get up on their hind legs and run.
At least in vines.
They don't have vines anymore.
Whoa, he's skittering around the hardwood floor.
Look at him.
He goes...
How cute is that?
And they're just like throwing blueberries one at a time.
Yeah.
So wait a minute now.
This guy, he acts like a cat.
Isn't he kind of a badass?
Isn't he cool?
So has yours, but yours is chilling.
Ours has only lived with us for three or four days.
So...
I'm not sharing all of my bearded dragon knowledge and wisdom, but there are things to know.
You learn why they surf the glass.
You learn why they skitter, right?
They don't like to see their own reflection because they think it's another dragon.
They're not super smart.
They're literally lizards.
Will they fight a mirror?
oh, this is a new tank, a new vivarium.
And so it's real shiny on the inside.
So we've had to deal with that.
But it's called glass surfing.
And there's many reasons.
But mostly, if anything changes in the vivarium, anything new, you could stress out a dragon just by putting a new stick in, let alone a new location.
And by the way, it has not met the cat yet.
That's the thing I got to deal with still.
But, but, so he's just hanging out.
Now, as of this morning, you could tell he's doing better because you're looking around like this.
Instead of just like looking like, are you, you know, you remember with your baby, you always, this is not a fun thing to say, but you worry if your baby's dead.
You remember that?
Sure, all the time.
All the time.
You're constantly going, like, you're waking the baby and like, please don't be dead.
You have not moved enough.
Like, you know, it's a real thing.
You're in the kitchen and you're like, I'd better go in and check and make sure the baby's dead.
By the way, iguana is what I was thinking of.
Um,
So anyway, he's been in this one spot, and you're not supposed to handle them a lot.
You're supposed to just leave them alone, make sure they're not too hot and not too cold.
That's a whole thing.
There's a lot to it.
But anyway, I love him.
He's a really, really cool little dude, and I'm very excited to have him in the house, I have to admit.
But you need someone in the decision-making process to be a karma suck.
You can't have everybody enthusiastic about everything all the time or your projects will all be bad.
Do you find that this is your role in many things in your household?
It's my role in life a lot of the time.
Yeah, I see.
I mean, I'm really good at saying no to things.
It's served me very, very well.
But you realized that you couldn't say no here because every alternative was worse.
I don't know what I could and couldn't do.
But let's just say... So, I mean, okay, I don't have to talk too much about, you know, house things.
But, like, okay, one thing... I think that ship has sailed here on the Dragon.
The ship has never sailed.
The ship can always go back to the harbor and I can throw the computer into the sun.
Here's the thing.
And I said this to my kid.
I said, here's the thing.
You don't...
There probably have not been that many bands that are extremely good and long-lived that started with somebody going, I've got a cool band name.
Now I just need to make a band.
The band name has to find you.
and i believe like your passport i also believe that a pet can and should find you and you they should need you you should find a pet an animal friend who needs you because you're not going to understand it until it happens and then when it does happen you go oh i think this needed me i want to give i want to give this this little creature a good life a good home and a good life you don't run into that by going it's easter sunday let's buy a fucking rabbit
Wow, that's such a four-quadrant bad idea.
Don't get a rabbit unless you're a rabbit person.
Seriously, don't.
It's not ethical to sell someone a rabbit in the spring.
It's not ethical.
It's a terrible idea.
Either it's going to die or you're going to bring it back to the store and everybody's going to be sad.
So what I said was—
Is there a holiday they're associated with?
See, but that's one of the policies.
Okay, you know our house policies.
We don't buy food to get a toy.
We don't buy toys to get food.
And we don't buy animals as a present.
An animal is not a present.
It's a project.
I'm not going to give somebody a baby for their birthday.
This is a very sensitive and, I think, delightful philosophy that you wait for a pet to arrive.
So this is why, and I'm not trying to cast an aspersion, but I feel like it's important to realize and learn that
You have to wait for the pet to find you.
It should be a project.
It should take a long time.
It should take longer than you think because you're committing to the life of that animal.
And so starting out with a breed, starting out with a name, like starting out with any of that stuff, that's no good.
You got to start out with, I'm going to go interact.
So like you, again, sort of like you and houses, sort of like you and your passport combination.
You should go out and interact with dozens and dozens of different animals and see which one needs you.
And you'll know it when you find them.
now what about so so i've been you know toying with this uh uh norwegian mountain cat for a long time siberian siberian um siberian like a savannah kind of siberian forest cat wait is it one of those like like a savannah is like a pseudo wildcat
Well, I think the cat is about three feet tall.
Okay.
I'll just Google it.
What is it called?
It's a Siberian forest cat.
Google Siberian forest cat chases fox.
Okay.
Got it.
That's a good one.
All right.
Siberian forest cats apparently are hypoallergenic.
So you can have it and not be sick.
Yeah.
And they're very companionable, apparently.
Yeah.
And also they're the size of dogs.
Oh, wow.
We have a Savannah cat in our neighborhood that gets out sometimes.
The Savannah cats are also like three feet tall, but they have really long legs, right?
They're huge and they are killers.
They go fucking happy go jappy on those crows.
Oh, boy.
The crows hate it.
You just see all of these crow feathers and crow guts falling out of the tree.
No, he kills crows?
Well, we get crows and we get hawks.
Sorry, the savannah cat we've only seen once in a tree, but we do also occasionally get a red-tailed hawk who makes the crows very, very unhappy.
Yeah, I'm sure.
Anyway, so go ahead.
This is really cute.
What a cute cat.
I have a friend that had one of those cats, those Savannah cats.
Yeah.
And he lived in a... He briefly lived in my loft, the Western State Hurricanes loft.
See, why do people do this?
Well, but he had this cat, and the cat could leap...
It could leap up onto the top of the beams.
They charge you by the generation.
They charge you by how close it is to a wild animal within, I think, four generations.
Wow.
I mean, this cat could leap 15 feet straight in the air.
It's a crazy wild cat.
Anyway, I don't think the Siberian forest cats are wild.
I think they're a long-established breed.
I love the coloration.
But you're absolutely right that you have to – first of all, you have to have a cat with a nice face.
I don't mean to disparage your cat.
No, it's fine.
It's fine.
Again, I don't get a vote.
You have to like a cat's face, right?
You can't have a cat who's – this is one of my rules.
Your cat's face cannot be too small relative to its ears.
Oh, it's like you get an uncanny valley thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The ears are too big for the face.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um,
And so I need a cat that I look at and I go like, yeah, am I right?
And the cat's like, yeah.
But but also like I wanted to, you know, I like I I don't want to get a cat where I'm just going to be sneezing and my throat's going to be closing up all the time.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
That's no good.
But you want a cat that's like a cuddler, but not like too cuddly, you know, like cat, like cat and I. It's like having a girlfriend.
Okay.
This is another reason.
I don't want to get too far into this.
You've got to wait around and find a girlfriend, right?
Okay.
All right.
This is another reason.
You don't just pick a type of girlfriend and go find one.
I thought the timing was right with this because the cat is a known quantity and a known quality.
This is a super chill adult, non-likely to immediately die for no reason.
Little lizard.
Not little.
He's big.
He's big.
But we got to interact with him.
We got to hang with him.
We got to learn about what his deal is.
So, like, it was not going into some situation where, like, I had to say to my kid, like, for example, you know, there's no way to know when you get a puppy or you get a dog of any kind.
It's difficult to know, especially if it's a puppy.
Will this be a dog that becomes a barking dog?
A yappy dog, right?
Is this dog going to be an asshole?
Now, all the dog people are going to be, oh, they're running right to their Dell computer.
Wow, it's really all about the burp.
Shut up.
The point is this.
I don't know enough to know how to know, epistemologically, will this be a dog that barks a lot?
Because let me tell you this.
Here's what I don't want.
Fucking 15 years of one of those dogs that jumps on people and barks all the time.
I don't like that dog.
I'm glad you like that dog.
I don't want that dog.
Once you have acquired the animal, forget it.
You're done.
That's your dog now.
That's your fucking dog.
That's why I want to preemptively say I would prefer not to have that.
Now, I go on a Tuesday afternoon in the sunset, and I get to meet a lizard, and he's super chill and cool.
Wow, exactly.
I put down a down payment.
So I'm sitting here right now in a lizard-free environment, and I'm thinking to myself, what would it take to get me into a lizard?
Right.
Right, okay.
Well, you've got to go at the end of the month when they're really going to make the sales.
But I'm realizing, look, he needs to talk to his manager, but what I've realized now— Under Cody, they put that on at the factory.
I am not as far away from owning a lizard as I might have thought.
Listening to you talk about how you came to be with this lizard.
She sent you a couple photos.
And it's a big dragon.
He's a dragon boy.
Bearded dragon that can run on its hind legs and eat blueberries.
He eats blueberries.
He likes, you can feed him these.
I feel bad about these things we got called hornworms, those like tomato worms, because they are so gorgeous, but they apparently, they love them.
The worms are gorgeous.
The worms are gorgeous.
They're like a blue-green color, like a blue-green you've never seen.
It's so beautiful.
Would you keep the worm as a pet?
I was tempted.
I talked to the guy at the pet store about it.
And he's like, yeah, we got a chrysalis in back.
It's going to turn into a moth.
I'm like, well, it'd be kind of cool if you could just keep it a worm.
You know, they like tomatoes.
Oh, you don't want the worm to turn into a moth.
Well, but you get into a pets or meat situation.
It's Roger and me all over again.
You know what I'm saying?
I told you about the time that we had that rooster that was snake food, but the snake wouldn't eat it.
Oh, yeah.
Really?
Well, how'd you deal with that?
You ever seen a snake eat a rooster?
It's pretty upsetting.
No, I haven't.
Oh, we did that in military school.
We had one of those big choky snakes, and you'd feed it a rabbit or a chicken, and boy, it was very upsetting to watch.
I told you this story.
I was over at a guy's house.
He had a bunch of snakes, but he had one big snake, and then there was a rooster.
And he was like, yeah, I got the rooster for the snake, but the snake will need it.
Oh, I remember this.
Was a pickup truck involved with this?
Yes, I do remember this.
And it was an El Camino, not a pickup truck.
That's it.
Okay, I do remember.
I remember there was an open vehicle involved.
Yeah, we drove across town in the back of an El Camino with the rooster.
Yeah.
And I was like, I'm going to set this rooster free.
And I did.
But I don't think good things happened to the rooster further on down the chain.
It was already domesticated probably.
It couldn't return to the jungle wilds of South Capitol Hill.
Oh, that's rough.
We can never know.
Maybe the rooster flew off.
Maybe it still lives in the mountains.
Maybe it's sired 10,000 chickens.
Yeah, I don't understand having a bird.
I mean, I'll look at a bird.
You can go lots of places to look at a bird.
I don't want to have a bird in my house.
No, but you didn't think you wanted to have a dragon in your house.
I didn't think a lot of things.
So now, you guys, and I can only imagine, but this is what would happen to me.
I would start to
now needs some dragon-related ephemera, peripheral, like, merch.
Are you talking about, like, the way you buy, like, a laser pointer for your cat?
No, no, no.
I'm saying, like, that I would start to wear a hat with a dragon.
Okay.
Right?
Or that I would go and I would, like, what are the clubs around dragon ownership?
Oh, right.
I'm sure there's a lot of how to train your dragon lol merch and stuff.
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe.
But I also want, you know, I want to like go back into the history of importing these bearded dragons and where they're from.
Maybe I would sew a patch on a backpack.
There's one nice thing about this is this is an entry-level lizard.
So like this or a ball python, a corn snake, there's certain kinds of reptiles that are considered entry-level reptiles.
And what's the advanced lizard?
Oh, there's some very advanced lizards.
There's some that might require more care or I guess perhaps be deadly.
I mean, I don't know.
But this is considered, this is a very chill, like the way they're often described, they're very chill, but they in some ways can have the personality almost of like a puppy.
Like they want to get out of the vivarium and hang out with you.
Once they've gotten over their relocation anxiety, which is real, they stop surfing the glass and now they want to be handled a little bit like a girlfriend.
Where's the fuck me?
Stop there.