Ep. 361: "Tethering the Gas"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hey, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
How are you going?
I think I'm good.
What am I?
There's a kind of tired where it's not because it's still early, but because I've been up long enough that it already feels like I'm ready for a nap at 10 a.m.
Mm-hmm.
What the heck did you get up that early today?
Well, you know, there's always things to do.
There's people stomping around, getting ready for school and work and whatnot.
Those people.
Yeah.
What's your sugar intake like?
Very, very low.
Sugar as in like candy type things.
Ice cream.
Well, I'll have me some ice cream.
I go through phases with ice cream, but I have to tell you that amongst my numerous vices, sugar is very low.
What about – are you on the crunchy, salty side or the sweet, like, chewy side?
I'm a savory boy.
You are?
Oh, boy, am I savory.
So, you are salty.
So, are chips your downfall?
Yeah.
What is my downfall?
I have so many downs fall.
As far as my vulnerabilities, I wonder sometimes if I have some sort of an imbalance of bodily humors, because I always crave large meat.
Really?
I'm a craver of large meat.
And I do like salty things.
There's never a time when you're like, I can't really do a whole meat right now.
Well, you know, lately I end up doing this weird bifurcated sleep thing where I fall asleep before I go to bed.
And sometimes I'll wake up and I'll have an oregano.
And I might have like a mac and cheese or something like that.
You know, I'll have a leftover.
Midnight mac and cheese?
Midnight-ish.
Yeah, usually a little later.
But yeah, that's roughly it.
But we've also recently rediscovered baked potatoes in our home.
And we've really been, you know, like a, you know, like a house of prime rib, fully loaded baked potato.
I've seen them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I'm talking about, I've never seen, I've never seen them at a house of prime rib because you've never taken me there.
God, I'm so sorry.
We gotta, we gotta settle this.
20, 20 years even maybe.
Oh my God.
Scott Simpson and I are like an old couple.
We just, we just go there.
I know.
That's the thing.
I mean, everybody we know in common has been with you to the house of prime rib, but you're my dim sum friend.
They all have T-shirts.
But I'm your dim sum friend of the last time that, I mean, that guy closed his dim sum store like six years ago.
Pigeons are probably still there.
That's the thing about the pigeons.
He didn't seem to mind the pigeons.
He wasn't happy.
He wasn't sad.
They were just part of the kitchen, the pigeons.
I did not make the rat, Merlin.
God made the rat.
If you have a problem with the rat... Oh, take it up with the Lord.
God, that's right.
What's your sugar intake?
I'm sorry, you've got to close this thread.
What's your sugar intake?
Oh, boy.
Are you vulnerable?
I am.
I don't like sweets, like tart sweets or sweet, sweet sweets.
I like chocolate and ice cream.
Chocolate, fat and sugar mixed together with cold, filled with things, filled with chunks.
I like chunky ice cream.
Yes.
And I like cake.
Honestly, I like cake.
I love cake.
Cake and ice cream.
And, you know, there's a lot of excuses to have cake and ice cream.
Um, I find that I make a lot more excuses than maybe a normal person would, would allow for, you know, like normal person's like birthday or it's, uh, I don't know.
It's like a Halloween cake or something, you know, I don't know.
That's interesting.
You would say that I've, there's something similar in our household that I've expressed to my daughter as that, uh, I come from a family that has a low threshold for celebration.
You know what I mean?
It doesn't take much for us to celebrate something.
I have a really high personal threshold for celebration.
Well, it's cause you don't, you don't, you don't celebrate your victories.
I don't.
And also just like, I don't want to celebrate my birthday.
You know, I used to, when I was a drinker, I would, I would celebrate my birthday by drinking alone.
But I am surrounded by all of the women folk in my, in my clan.
Um,
With the exception of my mom, of course, who shares my distaste for celebrating.
Um, although she celebrates her victories, I think she even celebrates my victories, but I mean, who could tell, but, uh, but the other ladies, um, and that, and it's a little, you know, that's a long tail.
They all celebrate, uh, every opportunity to celebrate.
And they also like the celebrations bleed over into the days on either side.
So it's like, you get a Jubilee.
Yeah, you do.
You get a Jubilee.
And so, so we had one of those last night.
And even though there was no reason for me especially to use it as an opportunity to eat an entire piece of giant cake and a huge bowl of ice cream in addition to the little bowl of ice cream we had at dinner, I took the opportunity.
I exploited the opening and scored the hat trick of three desserts.
Hmm.
And so I'm sitting here right now in a state, you know, I understand people have explained the human body to me a few times now.
People have tried.
People have tried to explain it to me.
You know, apparently it's some kind of machine.
Yeah, but there's a lot of paradoxes and a lot of it's very confusing.
Like you put fuel in.
Yeah, in your face.
And waste comes out.
Yeah, not your face.
But somewhere in between there, you know, you're like doing jumps and also you're thinking deep thoughts.
Yeah.
And you sing, you make music, you look at stuff and you can interpret it.
Like all of that is happening as a result of like the fuel that
And the waste, I guess, plays some role in it.
It doesn't feel like a normal machine that does a thing or two.
It's not anything I'd buy for myself.
No, why would you?
If somebody gave me a body as a gift, I'd be polite about it, but it's not the kind of thing I would want to obtain.
No, and if I was going to buy one, I'd buy a better one.
Or a little one, like our lizard.
That's fine.
Thank you.
He doesn't poop very much, and right now he's in the middle of his Odin sleep that he has in the wintertime.
He doesn't eat that much.
Oh, is he in Odin sleep?
He's in Odin sleep right now, yeah.
We're monitoring the situation closely.
We've turned off the lights.
We've darkened the room.
It's a whole thing.
Do you now have an entire room in your reasonably modest city apartment?
An entire room dedicated to keeping it dark for your Odin lizard?
Your Valhalla lizard?
Secondarily, because basically every room is my daughter's room.
In a way that I imagine you probably manage that better than I do.
But basically every room is her room now with the crafts and the food and the things.
And so the lizard lives and sleeps, has Odin sleep in her bedroom.
But, you know, by extension, it's all her house, really.
We don't really get a room for anything anymore.
I barely have a place to put my iPhone down.
When I when when I when I scooted my chair back to join you today on this program, I have a chair here at a table and I scooted it back and it made a crunching sound.
And I looked down and under the wheels of the chair was an old issue of Web of Spider-Man.
That belonged to me at one point many years ago and then got inherited by my daughter.
And she felt like the best place to put it was underneath the wheels of my chair.
You know, would that there were so much.
Would that there were.
Would that there were so much intentionality.
Right?
I mean, isn't that part of the problem?
It's just the baffling.
I was refactoring our spice rack yesterday, our spice area.
And I found a brown Lego in there.
But thank God it wasn't on the floor where most brown Legos end up, underfoot.
But no, it's a whole thing.
The body's a mystery to me, John.
I do know that sugar doesn't... I have to be careful, as you know.
As you know, I have to be careful with the carbs.
Yeah.
I mean, everybody's got to be careful with the carbs.
Well, carbs hurt my engine.
They hurt my engine and they make me Logie.
So do they hurt your engine?
This is what I'm getting at.
I should be.
There are lots of people.
So, for instance, I have a friend who's a nutritionist who teaches at the Bastyr College of Alternative Medicine.
And she, her entire yob, as we say, her yob is to go to school every day and teach alternative medicine.
medicine men and women about what you put into your machine and how important it is but yesterday i ate here's what i ate yesterday apart from the three desserts are you ready i'll start i'll start at the start oh gosh the first thing the first thing i did was the first thing i did in the morning was i went to the mall
Because yesterday's celebration was a birthday celebration, and my daughter and I and my mother all needed to buy presents for this person because we had- Oh, that's the person, and that person requires a week-long jubilee, correct?
That's right, and we had waited until the last minute to get these presents, so we needed to go to the- And I would never go to the mall, right?
But that's where- But I'm not the decider.
So we go to the mall-
Our age of being the decider is well behind us.
As I say, life just happens to me now.
I'm like, listen, no, we don't want to go to the mall.
I'm at the mall.
So we're walking around the mall.
I'm having a hard time.
I end up in a fireworks.
I'm standing there and I'm standing there just unclear like which way to turn.
Fireworks is one of those stores where there's no place for me to stand because any place that I pick like, okay, you know what?
I'm just going to stand here.
I'm not in anybody's way.
Somebody is immediately behind me like, excuse me.
It's like, okay, I'm going to go over here.
I'm going to stand.
No one will ever come to this.
Oh, excuse me.
Hmm.
And those stores, those fireworks stores, they are not ADA compliant.
I'm Googling it right now.
I don't think I know what a fireworks is, but I'm looking it up.
You know, it's like when we were kids, it was like the Hallmark store was where you went if you wanted to get somebody a Christmas ornament as a present.
Yeah, sure, sure, sure.
Or like cards or little things.
But now fireworks is one where you do that if you're like really fun.
Oh, I see.
Is it Fireworks Celebrating Art and Life, a Seattle gift store?
yeah yeah yeah it's really super fun offbeat unusual and unique gifts it's like spencer's gifts for grown ladies yeah it's offbeat is exactly right and the ladies that work there are all very fun 65 year old ladies who are super fun and having fun and there's so much fun stuff in there
Oh, like there's a, there's like a oven mitts that look like hot dogs.
That's fun.
It is.
It's so much fun there.
And I posted a picture on Instagram today, a bunch of socks that have swear words on them.
Um, it's just like, but the thing is, it's so crowded with stuff and then you put people in there and it gets way more crowded with, with people who are a form of stuff and
So I'm, so I'm standing around and I'm just like, I'm not going to buy anything here and I don't want to be in here, but my daughter's in here and she's looking, she's ostensibly looking for a present for a grownup.
But what she's really doing is trying on every hot dog shaped mitt she can find and like, Oh, wouldn't this be daddy?
Look what I found.
It's a, it's a puppy with a princess and a, and a princess and a pea.
And I'm like, that's not a gift for, that's not a gift for,
for the person we're looking for gifts for.
And she goes, and storms off and then comes back three minutes later.
It's a hot dog.
It's shaped like a fucking oven mitt.
So I'm standing there.
And then I see across the, across the store, this guy who's like six foot eight, 300 pounds across, you know, just, just all shoulders, all just giant guy.
And I know him, his name's Haas.
And he's like one of the old school guys.
uh like club bouncers in seattle and he looks at me across the store and i look at him and we're both and we you know of course we can see over everybody else's head we can see over all the display racks because they're you know they put everything down where little old moms can find it yeah and we look at each other across the store and we're both we both like mouth like what the fuck are you doing here yeah we're both trapped in this anyway so we're in this place and finally my mom comes over she's like i'm hungry
I go, okay, well, let's, you know, we're at the mall.
And I start that sentence thinking, what I'm trying to say is, we're at the mall, so let's get out of the mall if we're going to find food.
Yeah, right.
And what my mom hears is we're at the mall and there's so much food at the mall.
A whole quart of it.
A quart of food.
Not what I was saying.
But then we're at the food.
Mom gets some kind of shrimp teriyaki, which is not what you don't put those two things together.
Yeah.
My daughter goes to pachotle and gets a pachotle cheese quesadilla.
She gets a pachotle bastic?
She does.
She gets a bastic and pachotle.
And the thing is, if you went to any one of them, except for maybe the teriyaki place, and said, give me a bread and cheese.
You know, they're all going to have a bread and cheese.
It's really true.
Can I get a fried bread?
Give me a fried bread and cheese.
Whatever your version of a bread and cheese is, give it to me, please.
But she's like, no, no, no, I'm going to wait in line for 20 minutes at Pechotle to get a fucking bread and cheese.
And then, so I'm like, well, I have to, you know, I have to find something for myself.
And, you know, and I'm very frustrated in these places because there's always 57 people lined up at the Sbarro and the, and what are the Johnny Rockets?
And then there's the little falafel place.
And the guy is standing there trying to hand out little bits and people are just walking past.
I know.
He's like Babu.
You really feel for the guy.
So I went to the Babimbap Korean place where they're standing there like handing out.
They have a little superheated stone bowl filled with egg and kimchi.
I'm like, give me the one.
Give me the one with everything.
Give me the kimchi bowl.
So I started off the day with a big bowl of Korean food.
Just for the record, this is your first food of the day.
This is the first food of the day.
And this was some hot, by which I mean spicy, but also cold kimchi, plus other ingredients.
And so I start off the day with that.
That's the base layer.
And then I go, I do a bunch of work.
I putter around.
I ended up not getting anything at the mall.
I went to the Filson store, which is increasingly embarrassing for me.
But I went there.
I found a gift that was way more money than I should have spent on any gift for anybody.
But, you know, I buy gifts that I would like to receive.
You know what I mean?
I do.
Yeah.
And that's a, you know, a Filson.
I mean, assuming they haven't had a precipitous drop in quality, it's an investment.
In some ways, right?
That's exactly right, Merlin.
It's an investment.
And the thing about the mall, walking around the mall...
People keep talking about the death of retail, but there are 200 stores in this mall.
The mall is packed.
You can't turn around.
Really?
Everybody's buying stuff.
I don't understand how you can have so many shoe stores.
I've never understood that.
Or stores that are selling like God only knows what.
Because basically America has turned into, we are now a nation of stocking stuffers.
Really?
Look at that fireworks.
I was looking at the fireworks page.
It's stocking stuffers all the way down.
That's right.
That's what it is.
And walking through the mall, I'm looking around, I'm looking back and forth, and I'm like, 98% of everything in this mall and all the clothes on the backs of the people in this mall, it's all made in China, and it's all part of this gargantuan...
uh, economy, global economy that we all talk about all the time where stuff is being made with slave labor and comes over in shipping containers and gets sold for bargain prices.
And, and, you know, when we talk about it, we all wring our hands about it, but my God, it's, the world is transformed, right?
Like, like the idea that you would buy a pair of shoes and wear those shoes for
six years and then have them resold and wear them for another six years and then have them resold again.
The thing is that resolding a pair of shoes costs more than a new pair of shoes.
And a lot of people, I think, just, they buy a pair of shoes, they wear them for six months, and they throw them away and get a new pair of shoes.
I remember when that happened with VCRs.
I remember when VCRs, so VCRs used to be very costly, and then at some point in the 80s, VCRs became $200, full stop.
And you could get an increasingly nice VCRs
for $200.
Now, if something went wrong... And they were $1,500 when they came out, or $2,500.
Oh, they were very, very costly.
And the thing is, though, I remember at one point, I had a $200 VCR, as you do, and I needed it to be fixed, and they had what you call a bench fee.
You got a bench fee.
It's $50 for them to put it on the bench.
One quarter of the price of a newer and better VCR.
And I remember thinking at the time, huh,
Isn't that wild?
You know what I'm saying?
I do, and now they won't even put it on the bench.
Now they say, no, as soon as you crack the case open, all the butterflies inside get out, and then it can't be fixed, so forget it.
This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Health IQ.
You can learn more about Health IQ right now by visiting healthiq.com slash super trained.
Do you average eight hours of sleep at night?
Well, check.
Eat a quality plant-based diet.
Check.
Exercise four more times per week.
Check.
Basically, you're doing everything right to ensure that you live a long life.
Isn't it time that you'd be financially rewarded for your commitment to a healthy lifestyle?
Introducing Health IQ.
Health IQ uses science and data to secure lower rates for people like you on their life insurance.
If you're a runner or a cyclist or you're into CrossFit or any other type of athlete, even a committed weekend warrior, if you're a vegetarian or vegan, then you deserve to be rewarded for your hard work with more affordable life insurance rates.
Health IQ can save you up to 41% because physically active people have significantly lower risks for heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.
And Health IQ is not just a lead generator.
They take the customer through the entire process of applying, and the policy is underwritten by one of their top insurance partners.
But these savings are exclusive to Health IQ.
You won't find them anywhere else, and you must qualify to get a special rate.
to see if you qualify please go to healthiq.com super train to take their proprietary health iq quiz depending upon your score as well as other related qualifying factors you can save up to 41 on your life insurance premiums compared to other providers again that is healthiq.com super train to let them know that we sent you and you can start the process with the health iq quiz
No commitment.
You'll learn even more about your potential opportunities to be rewarded for your commitment to living healthy.
One last time, healthIQ.com slash super train.
Our thanks to Health IQ for supporting Roderick on the line and all the great shows.
Throw it away and get a new one.
There are no benches anymore.
You got no butterflies.
I went by the other day.
I drove past.
You lost all the magic.
Yeah, where'd the fucking butterflies go?
I'm doing the thing where I'm driving around the city now, and I can't even – I can't help myself.
You know, we used to – Jason Finn and I used to go drive around the town together and point out apartment buildings and be like, oh, yeah, I slept with a girl in there.
Oh, yeah?
I slept with a girl in there.
And it was like really a dick – it was an afternoon kind of event for us to like be, you know, like jerks.
Sure.
Now we drive around.
Can't help but drive around and go, I remember when that was –
I remember when that was the fabric store or whatever.
I remember when that was.
And I drove past this place.
And it was the typewriter repair place.
And now it is like an axe throwing bar with some kind of – they're making single malt whiskey on the spot and flavored with vape juice or whatever.
And there's a bunch of guys in there with beards.
And I was like, oh, and I had forgotten because it hasn't been the typewriter store for for 20 plus 25 years.
Right.
But I remember going into the typewriter store and there was a crazy guy in there with a green visor and the store was kind of dark, except he had some little table lights that were pointing down at his work.
And I went in there, and it wasn't like a printer store.
You didn't go in there for cartridges or something.
You went in there to get your typewriter fixed.
And I had a typewriter, and he fixed it.
And I was looking, and I was like, typewriter store, typewriter store.
There's nothing even remotely equivalent to it left in the universe, right?
Where would you take...
I have a clock that I wanted to get repaired and I took it to somebody that where the sign on the place said clock repair.
This was a clock from 1930.
And the person looked at it and said, yeah, there's no point in fixing that.
And I was like – That's not really the attitude I'm looking for.
There is a point in fixing it.
It is a clock from 1930 that has a sentimental value but also like real value to me as a thing from my family.
And it's a clock.
You can surely fix a clock.
You are a clock fixer.
No, not really.
Not really.
There aren't parts available and it's not really worth it.
Oh my.
I was like, wow, worth it.
You don't like to hear that.
Worth it.
Anyway, it definitely made me feel like the idea of going to the Filson store and making an investment in something that you expected was going to last the rest of your life.
It's become such a...
I don't know.
It's like such a performance now because nobody is truly ready to say when their shoes – when the sole gets worn through that they're going to take their shoes to somebody and pay more than they would pay for a new pair of shoes.
to get the souls redone unless you're really, really, really fight.
You're really swimming upstream, right?
You're really fighting the tide.
You're going to be the, you're going to be the anachronism that does this.
Right.
And I, you know, I'm exactly the target audience for that mentality.
Like I'm the anachronism.
I'm going to get my shoes repaired, but Jesus Christ.
Yeah.
You know, then you got to find the shoe repair guy.
And I don't know.
You've dealt with the shoe repair guys.
You know how they are.
They sit sniffing glue all day.
Well, I mean, without, you know, too much, you know, OPSEC, you know, disclosure.
Right.
That's one reason I like our dorky neighborhood is that we do have stuff like that around.
There is a shoe guy nearby.
Like there is a tailor nearby.
Like you can go in and get a guy.
I was pondering getting some buttons reinforced because I like the shirt that I got, but I thought the buttons were a little bit flimsy.
Like they hadn't really fully stitched them on.
I like a real solid button.
You know what I'm saying?
Right.
Right.
We got a saxophone repair place.
You walk by here.
Oh, you got the saxophone over here.
They were smocks, John.
They were smocks.
I had a button come off the other day, and I was walking past a laundromat.
Not a laundromat, a dry cleaner.
And I walked in, and there was a lady there from Asia.
And I said, this button came off.
And she said, give it to me.
She sewed it back on better than it had been sewed on before.
And I was like, how much?
And she said, $5.
Come on.
Yeah, $5.
That's not enough.
That's not enough money, lady.
All she did was sew a button on it as far as she was concerned.
Yeah.
And so I was like, thanks.
You know what I should do?
I should bring everything in here and have you sew buttons on it because every jacket I own is missing one button.
Mm-hmm.
She was like, yeah, whatever.
It's like the spice rack, John.
It's a quality of life issue.
When you refactor your spice rack, you're making a lot of decisions about the worth of your life.
For one thing, you're saying this cardamom, like we didn't use it much, but that don't matter.
Like the date has passed, has long passed, right?
I don't really need all these different spice rubs.
I don't really use any of them.
But I refactored it.
I changed the height of the shelves.
And it was a huge improvement.
Now, I put on a shirt that I really enjoy today.
Not Mack Weldon.
This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Mack Weldon.
You can learn more about Mack Weldon right now by visiting MackWeldon.com.
Mack Weldon believes in smart design, premium fabrics, and simple shopping.
Oh, their website is so easy to use.
I use it all the time.
I have an order on the way right now, and I'm going to tell you about it.
Mack Weldon will be the most comfortable underwear, socks, shirts, undershirts, hoodies, and sweatpants, and more that you will ever wear.
They have a line of silver underwear and shirts that are naturally antimicrobial, which means they eliminate odor, and they want you to be comfortable.
So if you don't like your first pair, you can keep it, and they will still refund you with no questions asked.
Not only does Mack Weldon's underwear, socks, and shirts look good, they perform well, too.
They're good for working out, going to work, going on dates, or just everyday life.
Friends, as we speak, as I mentioned, I am waiting for the arrival of two, two, two items from Mack Weldon that I purchased just the other day.
Items that I have ever purchased with my own American money.
One is my go-to top layer.
They're luxurious.
Tech cashmere long sleeve in charcoal heather, size XL.
I'm a little guy, but I like a big shirt.
Susumi, you know.
And the other item is a new one.
I'm very excited to try.
That is the Atlas jacket in true black size XL.
Let's just put it this way.
I really love Mack Weldon's clothes.
I wear them literally every day, and I can confidently endorse them with my official okidoki.
So, you know, get on board.
Go to MackWeldon.com.
You're going to get 20% off your order by using the promo code ROTL.
That's R-O-T-L, just like it sounds.
Go to MacWeldon.com.
Our thanks to Mac Weldon for supporting Roderick on the Line and all the great shows.
Although I do enjoy Mac Weldon very much.
I put on a shirt from a different internet clothing company that I like a lot, but it's a little flimsy.
You know, but like, you know, as you know, my wife and I refer to this as the tiny life improvement project, which is finding little tiny things that you can improve in your life that have outsized effects.
And I'm here to tell you right now, making a shelf that will accommodate the olive oil and the seldom air on the same shelf is huge.
It's been huge.
And I feel like there's lots of things like that, and I don't want to be told not to repair my shoes.
That makes me sad.
Don't do that.
He's pivoting to wallets.
He's pivoting to wallets and various leather goods now as well.
The Shoe Man.
The Shoe Man is.
The Shoe Man has pivoted to wallets and purses and whatnot, as well as shoes.
He's got the ability to do – he has the technology.
He can make those shoes better than they were.
Better, stronger, faster.
He can make them faster than they were.
That's right.
But he can also make purses and he can make wallets.
I bought a gift there for my wife two Christmases ago.
I went in and I got her – because I like to shop local.
You know what I'm saying?
I do.
I shop local, right?
Buy local.
My brother-in-law had a whole career –
in um office hardware so he um for years and years and years he was a he was a big wheel at the uh at the printer selling place and they were a printer mainly printer selling place but they also did printer servicing and they were uh i think probably a franchise but they were under the aegis of a large and well-known manufacturer of office hardware stuff
And, you know, this was I mean, it really feels like something from the 30s at this point was that he would have these relationships with whether that was a, you know, a mom and pop store or like a school system.
Like you would you would work with them and you were the rep, the sales rep.
But the thing is, by the time he retired a few years ago, that career didn't exist anymore.
I mean, my Epson printer that I like fine – I mean, here's my review of every printer.
It's fine.
Right?
It scans.
It roasts.
No.
It does the things, but we just buy costly ink for it until it breaks, and then we get another one.
And what am I going to do?
I'm going to take it to a store.
I'm going to say, fix my Epson?
That's going to be like asking for... Here's what I want to talk to you about.
Yes.
Here's what I want to show you about.
Do you think your lady friend, your baby mama, do you think she would enjoy a printer for her Jubilee?
Well, she just bought a printer.
Okay.
And just three days ago.
But I realized in watching her do it, I have not bought a printer since... I honestly cannot tell you the last time I bought... No, no, no.
I bought a printer in 2007.
And it had some element that was meant to be Wi-Fi.
And I tried to... Oh, boy, you don't want me typing on that little screen.
It's brutal.
Brutal typing on that little screen.
And I was not ever able to successfully print...
And it sat there on top of what I guess was a DVD player until they all went to the Goodwill.
And I've never bought a printer since.
And so anytime somebody sends me an email that says, print this out, sign it, and fax it back, I reply to the email and I say, no, I cannot do those things.
I do not have a printer.
I know you won't do those things.
No, I will not.
If you can't do it on your phone, you don't want to do it.
I'm like, you either find a way to send this to me where I can approve it with a minimum of effort by clicking yes or I will not do it.
And a couple of times I've actually gone – like when I was selling my house, I actually went down to the mortgage office in a downtown office building.
And said, you have every paper you want me to sign all there on the desk and I will sign them with a pen and we will have a human interaction about this because I am not going to try and navigate your online signing process.
And you had better believe I'm not going to print something out, sign it and fax it back.
Go fuck yourself.
Anybody who asked me to do that.
And there's a lot of stuff in the music business where they want you to do that.
Print it out and sign it and fax it back.
John, people love doing the thing that's easy for them.
Not even to say make it easy for me, but it's more like there's so many problems.
Don't get me started on this.
I won't get me started on this.
Please don't.
This is an email problem, too.
It's like you and that lady who got mad at you because you didn't respond to your Facebook message.
She might as well have just put it on her front porch.
Put it on your porch and ask me to find it.
You know what?
We have a printer.
If the pie graph of our printer usage, easily far and away, I feel like my lady and I are probably both competing for the 2% slice.
And for me, that is a, before we go out for Halloween, I always print the same sign that I put over the candy and say, help yourself.
I have a template for a note that I give to our neighbors if we're going to be traveling that I change details of.
My lady prints out, you know, school things and work things occasionally far and away.
90 plus percent is my kid doing often paper craft she found on the internet that she prints out.
She is the alpha user of it.
Yeah.
That's fun.
Papercraft is fun.
So far, we don't allow our child anywhere near the internet.
So that will change, I'm sure, one of these days.
Where did she get her papercraft?
18 or 19.
Oh, we have those books that are like, oh, here's the thing you can color.
But also, I'm looking at a piece of paper that she drew on six months ago that's still taped to the wall here.
If she wanted to make a decoupage jar of Star Trek memes, where would she get those?
Where would she get those?
I'm realizing I'm doing a bad job as a parent.
No, you're doing a great job.
I listened to this interview at Dave Eggers today that I wasn't going to mention to you, but I'm going to send to you.
It's a very interesting interview.
Ezra Klein from Vox interviews Dave Eggers.
I think you would find it thought-provoking.
Yeah.
You know, I like him and he has given me things to think about many times.
That's not for you.
Over the years.
That's not for you.
That's not for you.
Is a thing he said to you that you then said to me and I think about constantly now.
The fella does not have Wi-Fi in his house.
Well, yes.
And this is exactly, you know, he was saying this.
I mean, the last time he and I did a thing was, it has to be five years ago.
And we were walking.
It was some kind of thing.
And we were walking from – I think I talked to you about it.
We went to some cocktail party in a rich people's house.
And he was kind of singing for his supper a little bit.
They were rich people that were literary people, obviously.
And they had done an event and they'd done another event.
And then we were going to this part.
We were going to like a rich people house.
And we were going to this party that he was going to give a little talk and they were going to give money.
That's what it was.
They were going to give money.
A lot of what he does is stuff related to the various A26s and whatnot.
Yeah.
And, and he's, and he's genius at it.
You know, he makes everybody feel smart and then, uh, and they all give money and then he, and he is the, he's number one Irish goodbye guy, right?
He's just like at the party, he's the center of the party.
And then somehow.
He'll sneak up behind you and he'll be like, ready?
Let's go.
I have so much aloha for that.
I love that.
You go out through the kitchen door and then you're like three blocks away before anybody in the house is like, hey, where's the guest of honor?
It's too late.
Really good.
They're gone.
But even then, and this was 15 years after the first time he said, that's not for you.
He was laying out some science for me about like, you don't want to be, you don't want to like...
give too much you don't want to put yourself in a place very good case for it including that he still has a flip phone now there is more than i'm not gonna i'm not gonna use the word but there's a word here that i want to use that i'm not gonna use because you'll get might get frustrated with me but you know he does he is very successful and has people oh yeah oh yeah it's not like he's driving it's not like he's driving a lyft
Well, and he has a lot of – he knows what his limitations are, right?
Which I respect.
But I mean to be able to say – and again, I'm not going to say the P word.
But to be able to say, well, I'm writing a 600-page novel, so I've chosen to spend 10 minutes on email in the morning.
And then for the rest of my day, I will read for two hours and then I will write my thoughts for my novel in the afternoon is not something everybody can do.
Right.
Well, sure, but he's not advocating his principles.
He's not going to like the hotel workers employees union and giving a speech to them about how they should use their time.
No, no, no, no, absolutely not.
And that's why I say it is, I continue to say that I just sent you the link.
It's very thought provoking because he is making the case for saying, well, hey, you know, if you do have this level of control, like would you have accepted all the things that have become incursions to our attention and privacy in even just the last 10 years?
Oh, this thing you sent me is a podcast.
It's a podcast for listening.
Sorry, just go to the second half.
No, you already queued it up.
Podcasts are catching on.
I really think they're going places.
I know, I know.
Anyway, I just thought it was thought-provoking and made me think of you because he is saying a lot of the things that I'm given to believe that you think, and I think not just for you to nod along, but I think he presents it in a novel and very sensible way.
See, that's what I'm looking for.
And that it's nice.
I think you just you said something just really interesting there.
When you hear someone who agrees with you or who's thinking comports with yours.
There's a tendency to think that you're just listening and nodding along or that you want your own biases confirmed by someone else.
But in fact, I think, and this is maybe why podcasts are catching on, why people like listening to this show.
You hear someone state a thing that you believe in a kind of nascence or you are trying to, you're trying to
Yeah, you might have a sort of gaseous version of that idea without any, I don't know if you can have a mooring for gas, but it's not really tethered to anything.
And so sometimes just hearing people be smart can be really useful, whether or not you quote unquote agree with them or not.
Well, and even if they are also trying to tether their gas, hearing them do that and you're over here tethering your gas and you're like, oh, right, right, right, right, right, right, right.
I mean, it's part of it.
I guess it's why we converse.
Anyway, the second meal I had yesterday was at an old style Italian restaurant.
And an old-style Italian restaurant, by which I mean the owner was there, and coming around to the tables.
I love that.
It's great, except in this case, there was a husband and wife waiter team who were actually serving us.
Oh, were they needy?
They were, you know, they're older.
You know, they're my age, right?
Yeah.
And they were extremely needy, like almost cracky.
Oh, that is a turn off.
You know, just like, is everything great?
Okay, well, just, you know, like, let me know everything.
And they're flirting with my kids.
Please don't explain the food.
Well, they weren't doing that because it wasn't, this was 100% not a place where they were like, have you ever dined with us before?
We do things a little bit different here.
They didn't do that because this was an old-school Italian restaurant.
It's like, if you don't know what a fucking meatball is, there's nothing funny about the meatball.
You know what?
Figure it out.
We didn't put any sage in it.
The meatball is not in any kind of reduction.
It's just a fucking meatball and some sauce.
And if you want extra sauce, that's fine.
It's just a dollar.
Not a problem.
Not a problem.
But they were needy.
It felt almost like
The owner was super nice, old, white-haired guy.
And it felt a little bit – and he spent most of the time in the bar joshing it up with people.
But it felt – by the way the waiter and the other – by the way the servers, rather, were behaving, it felt like if they did something – like he was beating them in the back.
But the energy was kind of cracky.
Like maybe it wasn't that he was beating them.
It was like that they were on their last –
They were on their last leg or that they were on crack.
Oh, literal crack.
Yeah, like couldn't – they weren't able to moderate how enthusiastic they were about what was happening.
We were just a family that was having a birthday dinner.
Yeah.
And we didn't need anything.
No.
And we didn't – after we said one time like, it's great, thanks.
That was the last interaction that we needed before, except for filling up the water glasses, right?
Please.
Just more water, more water.
They didn't need to come be cute.
There wasn't any necessity of any further.
We didn't need any more forks.
But at that meal, it was an Italian restaurant that had too much food.
Is this the core group of four?
The core group of four.
Mm-hmm.
And one of our party ordered a ribeye steak.
One of our party ordered a cioppino with a side of scabetti.
Cioppino!
Cioppino, not to be confused with pachotle, that's like a hearty Italian seafood stew?
Correct.
Okay.
One of our party ordered...
a veal marsala with a... I make a good marsala.
That's a good sauce.
And this was a hearty marsala.
And that also came with a side of scabetti.
And these are not like small sides of scabetti.
These are like... It would be a whole portion of food.
And then one of our party...
ordered a cheese and bread in the form of a small cheese.
Now, this is for Highlights Magazine.
I feel like two of those I could get easily.
You know what I mean?
You know what I'm saying?
So you got Highlights Magazine, you got people over here, you got dishes over there, and you draw a line with a pencil between them.
Right.
How do you figure out who in the core four is ordering these things?
Well, but in the end, I think you will...
I think you'll know better when I explain that.
I ate my meal.
And then I also ate... The cheese and bread?
Some of everyone else's.
Oh!
You know, it's like Mr. Rogers says, look for the helpers.
I had a piece of cheese and bread.
I had what would constitute a lunch-sized portion of the cioppino.
And I was given a third of the steak.
Wow.
Okay.
In addition to my veal marsala and scabetti.
And so by the end, I was like, I had had too much food because, you know, I'd already started the day with my breakfast, with my babimbat breakfast.
And so when the wait staff came over and said,
are you ready for dessert spumoni you know we said we have we already have dessert at home because we're having a birthday
And they would not take no for an answer.
Wouldn't they?
And we were like, we really don't.
And they were like, it's free.
We're giving it to you for free.
And we were like, that's wonderful, but we still don't want it.
Because half the time the desserts in an Italian restaurant like this, if they are, the more authentic, the more authentico they are, the worse they are.
Right?
Like nobody wants Spumoni.
Nobody.
I challenge you to find me a person that wants Spumoni.
Yeah, I mean, of the great European dining experiences, I don't turn to Italy for dessert over much.
Not as much.
Not as much.
That's just not what they're the best at.
But the two, the husband and wife…
They're just, like, frantic to give us the desserts.
As though if they fail to give us the desserts, that they're going to go back and, you know, they're going to have to put the lotion on their skin or whatever.
Right, right, right, right.
Or maybe it's like, you know, the way Comcast really wants you to have a phone.
You know, maybe it's one of those things where, like, they get some kind of offset credit from a big dessert.
Let me ask you about that phone thing.
Yeah.
I want...
What I want is I have now a house that's from 1955.
I'm sorry.
I took care of your story.
No, no, no.
It's good.
I also have a phone from about 1955.
And I would like to have it so that there was a phone in my house that rang.
And I would give this phone number to about three people.
Yep.
But I want to have this.
I want an old fashioned phone in my house that rings when about three to five people call it.
Yeah.
Is that technologically possible now, given the way things run?
The very short answer is absolutely yes.
The much longer answer is, are you sure that's what you want?
Because you're going to get tons of spam.
Is that?
Well, because of the way the spam does.
When I added cellular to my watch...
Even though I have many layers of spam prevention on my phone, whenever the watch was on the stand and therefore not – long story short, no matter what phone number you get, pretty much, you're going to get – it isn't a fresh number.
You're getting a reused number.
You know what I'm saying?
So you're going to have a ring-a-ding-a-ding for shizzle.
And if you are going to do that, I would do it through the actual phone company.
You know what I'm saying?
You mean not the Comcast?
I mean, it could.
I don't know.
I imagine all the connectors are similar.
Does the phone company still exist?
Like, they will run a phone?
I think so.
I think there's a phone company.
I think so.
I'm not sure.
But the nice thing, if you're going to get a phone, you might as well get a phone that'll work when the power's off and stuff.
If you follow my reasoning, if you're going to get a goddamn phone in your house, which is quizzical to me, that's so weird.
That's like stocking stuffers, stockings full of inboxes.
No thank you, hard pass.
Hey, have some new places to check.
Ring-a-ding-a-ding-a-ding.
Right.
Hello, DHL, number one service.
Pick up prize.
No thank you.
The reason that I want this is for that exact reason, which is I do not answer my phone.
And people call me and I don't answer it.
And people call again and I don't answer it.
And, you know, the other day there was somebody calling and I didn't answer it.
And then there was another time when somebody called and I didn't answer it.
And what I want is a place where the people that I will always want to answer it
Yeah.
Can call.
Yeah, I know.
I feel you.
You want a bat phone.
You want a bat phone.
I want a bat phone.
You want a bat phone where only Commissioner Gordon, Chief O'Hare is not even allowed to call that phone except in extraordinary circumstances, right?
Just the, exactly.
Just the, just the people that I need to be able to call me at any time because there are those, there are those moments.
It's a joy phone.
It's a joy phone or a danger phone with nothing in between.
A joy phone or a danger phone.
Right, right.
But what I don't want is more spams.
I don't want any more spams.
Yes.
I'm going to look into that.
Anyway, so— So they want you to get to the—so you've had your meal and then part of the party's meals.
I've had three meals just at that meal.
And the Folli Ado, or however you would say that in Italian, they're going crazy because they really want you to make a dessert go in your face.
Yeah, and so I end up acquiescing.
We all do.
We acquiesce to the forced dessert.
And then there's a singing.
The one cracky server is like, everyone, one, two, three.
And everybody in the bar turns and there's this kind of like singing.
And then the ice cream shows up.
And then the old man comes over and he's like, ha, ha, ha, ha.
That was everything.
And he gives no sign that he's whipping his servers in the back.
Yeah.
And then the lady server, at the end, she comes over with the comment card.
What?
And is like, you don't have to fill this out.
Mama comes over with the comment card and it's her joint?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it's not her joint.
This is the server lady.
Oh, Cracky Came brought it over.
Cracky Lady came by.
Okay.
And she's like, here's the comment card.
You know, you don't have to fill it out, but if you want, like, here it is, and here's the pen.
Oh, my God.
Blinked twice.
And I was like, weird.
Okay, so I gave it to my little girl, and she filled it out, which was great because she was like, the food was about a four and a half.
And she drew a little thing and then she's like, the service was, and I'm just like, you do.
And so the comment card ended up being a graphic novel, you know, because she'd crossed, she'd done a couple that were fours and then she crossed it out and made them five.
But she did a second pass.
Crossed it out.
Didn't edit.
Yeah.
But yeah, but all on the same page and in different colored crayons.
So, you know, it would be unintelligible to any, any other adult.
Okay.
Yeah.
But then I came home and I had a piece of cake and a giant bowl of everything but the Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
Now, a nutritionist would say that I should be exhibiting the signs today of having been poisoned.
Right?
Okay.
Shouldn't I today be feeling some consequence of having eaten five large portions of food across a fairly broad spectrum of nationalities and spice levels?
Because the cioppino is very spicy, whereas the marsala, as you know, is not a spicy food.
And cheesy bread, a couple of different times.
A commonality through a lot of these foods is what I would just call richness.
Rich.
They're all very rich.
You've had a lot of what my family used to call rich food.
Rich food.
That's right.
There was not a light meal.
Not wealthy food or privileged food, but rich.
It's got a richness.
You've got your creams.
You've got your meats.
You've got a zesty stew.
And, of course, you've got cheese and bread.
Cheese and bread, zesty stew, coffees, of course, also, which I don't even mention.
And so I should, by all rights, have either no energy or too much energy or the wrong kind of energy.
Right.
Or my head should be swimming or it should be aching or it should be – or I should be – You should be experiencing extremity.
Extremity, I should have really bad hot takes about George Martin and the string score of I Am the Walrus.
I should be over-quoting The Godfather.
Something bad should be happening.
And the interesting part of this, which I imagine is part of your Weltanschauung, is does this mean you're extremely unhealthy or extremely super healthy that you are not experiencing impact?
Thank you.
So is it because I am so...
so screwed up in this life that I am not even affected by all this terrible chemistry?
Or is it that it doesn't matter what you put into your, your battleship Potemkin, um, it will just power through the Adriatic.
It will, it will, it will cross the Dardanelles.
Um,
Irregardless?
Irregardless, yeah.
Right?
SS irregardless.
SS irregardless, yeah.
I wish I knew the answer to this.
Because on the one hand, so not to overanalyze this or overstate this, but on the one hand, a person might look at you and say, huh, the fact that you're not experiencing impact right now would indicate that your body is such a Potemkin wreck that something is horribly, horribly wrong.
And it's probably just a matter of time before you literally explode.
That's right.
From savoriness and richness.
So you die from savoriness.
Well, like, what if you're Wolverine?
What if it turns out that you're dietary Wolverine and, like, it hurts every time, but then it heals?
Like, maybe you have massive Spider-Man-like recovery abilities.
Now, have we talked about the hardened fecal matter?
The article there is doing a lot of work.
Just as a thing, hardened fecal matter?
So years ago, we're talking about in the early 90s, in Seattle, there was a place called the Gravity Bar.
And the Gravity Bar was very futuristic.
It was very heuristic.
Mm-hmm.
But it was designed in a way that now you see a lot, but at the time it seemed very Logan's run.
It was all white surfaces and chrome, and things were backlit.
There was maybe some pink light that was behind something that made it... It's like if Virgin America were a bar.
Thank you.
Exactamundo.
It was a Virgin America, but it wasn't a bar.
It was a...
Vegan juice food place.
Okay.
Wow.
Talk about ahead of its time.
It was way, way out.
Wow.
And on Capitol Hill in 1991, 92, 93, 94, it was the jam.
And the first time I went in there, when I first moved to Seattle, I went in just like, what?
No way do I want to go into a vegan juice bar.
But I was with some ladies that had a vision of the future in our lives, and I was like, yes, I will do whatever you say.
But there's no pizza.
And they were like, there's no pizza, but don't worry.
You won't miss it.
And there was a meal called the RV1, I think.
It was like RV-1, something like that.
And it was just very lightly steamed vegetables and tahini.
And I sat down in front of this thing and I was like, I don't want to just eat raw vegetables and whatever this ranch dressing is.
And they were like, just try it.
Quick question.
Is this dinner?
Yeah.
no i would i would call it a late lunch okay all right and probably that changes my perception that sounds like a fantastic lunch so it it it was a fantastic lunch and it blew me away and it was one of those there's been 50 of these events in my life where i was like oh well if i could just eat this every day i'd be a vegetarian shit dog no kidding oh yeah yeah so that's a high bar though
But when people say like, what would you do if you had a million, billion, trillion dollars?
The only two things I've ever consistently said over time is I would have my clothes made and I would have someone cook for me.
And that person would cook for me and they would make me a vegetarian because they would –
Make delicious vegetarian food for me every day.
And I wouldn't have, and they would never tell me, there would be no virtue signaling.
I would not have to go to a vegetarian restaurant.
No, no, no, no, no, but this is the problem.
This is the problem is that, like, at least for me as a carnivore mostly, you know, part of it is that, like...
For as long as I can remember, vegetarian, and God, don't even get me started on vegan, was presented as a neutered option.
Like in the 80s, I went to exactly one vegetarian restaurant, I think ever in the 80s, and it was fantastic.
They served, what's that herbal tea, that seasonings, season, celestial seasonings?
Celestial seasonings.
They had iced teas and they had steamed vegetables, but it was all flawless and it was not neutered.
Because the first thing I ever learned, you know this, John, first thing I ever learned about eating vegetarian is when possible, don't eat something
Reject a food that's given to you if it would normally have meat in it.
Yes, thank you.
That's exactly right.
Vegetarian food cannot just be the same meal that you would order with meat, except they've either replaced it with fake meat or they have just...
Now, that's come a long way.
Let's be honest.
That's come a long way.
But in the 80s, that was something I learned and it was true.
But here's the thing.
If you go and there's somebody who actually cares about this and who does not see this as a neutered version of regular food, it can be sublime.
Super good.
And that's what I'm always, all I want, all I want is just to have my feet.
And the clothes, also the clothes.
And the clothes.
I want a gravy fountain.
I want four different kinds of gravy that can be deployed like a Coke machine.
Need to come back on the Jogo cruise because it's still there.
It's still pumping gravy out every day.
Love a sauce, a sauce or a gravy.
Love it so much.
You and I have talked about this before.
I like to be fooled.
I want you to lie to me.
If you can get away with it, right?
And the way that I want to be lied to is do the thing without consulting me that is best for me and don't offer me any options.
You need something between a personal assistant and a magician.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, exactly.
Like here's your food.
And then I will go, great.
Thank you.
And I will, and I'll eat it.
But if you say, would you like to go get a super hearty, heavy bowl of meat stew, or would you like meat stew without the meat?
Do you want to go to the vegan bakery?
No, no, I don't.
But the great thing about, about the gravity bar,
Was it introduced me, first of all, to the well, the good thing about it was it introduced me to wheatgrass juice, which I which I loved.
And for most of the 90s, I would go in to I would stop into the gravity bar and get a double shot of wheatgrass juice the same way I would get an espresso.
I'd just be like, oh, yeah, you need to stop in here and get a wheatgrass juice.
Wheatgrass.
Because I actually loved the taste of it.
And a lot of people don't.
They think it tastes like grass, which it does.
But I really like it.
It's sweet.
You know, it's a sweet flavor.
All right.
I'll try it.
Have you never had a shot of wheatgrass juice?
I don't think I have.
I've been to places where they have the grass.
Oh, yeah.
I have it.
It's so good.
You love the juice.
You love the mastiff of spinach that you've boiled down to like a thimble of spinach water.
I like that very much.
And wheatgrass juice.
That's a lot of work.
That's a lot of work.
And then you got to clean the thing after.
But if you go to the Gravity Bar, you don't have to because they do it for you.
And they're growing grass right there in the store.
They pull out a tray and it's covered with grass.
They've been growing grass.
And they mow it.
And then they put the grass that they mowed into a squeezer.
And out the other side comes a shot glass full of bright green grass juice.
I'm going to try this.
It's really, really delicious.
People seem to really like it.
Is it energizing?
Oh, you feel so much energy.
As a cleaner machine?
This is the thing.
In contravention to this thing I've been saying this whole time, which is that I can eat a bunch of garbage and not feel it, when I would drink a shot of wheatgrass juice, and this may just be confirmation bias, but I always felt like, kazing!
Like super... Clarity?
Yeah, but grass is also full of sugar.
I don't know.
Maybe that's true.
I gotta try this.
Anyway, the bad part about going to the Gravity Bar was that there was a... Although it was Logan's Runny, and it was made to seem very futuristic, and the meal was called the RV1, like all the meals had names like that, because the whole trip...
Of the restaurant was, this is the future.
Oh, I see.
We are the future.
And your bleep blorps and your apple clamshell laptops, it's all part of this, which is we're all going to be eating raw vegetables and tahini, or rather lightly steamed vegetables and tahini, and drinking shots of wheatgrass juice in like a pink neon...
Colored bar.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because you're, you know, you're like hamburger joint is the thing that's going to, that's like on the XM Valdez and water world.
Yeah.
Right.
Like it's over.
Yeah.
But there was a book by the cash register.
that was for sale.
And it was kind of like those things at the Starbucks where all of a sudden you're like, why am I buying a Bob Dylan record?
Oh, like an Ed Sheeran or a gift card.
Yeah.
Retail opportunities.
It was a retail opportunity, but they only really sold a couple of things.
And one of them was this book.
And it was a little in the family of Behold the Pale Horse.
It was a conspiracy book.
But the conspiracy, but it was food conspiracies.
And this person, and the book starts out very reasonable.
That's how they get you.
That's how they get you.
And it's just like, oh, well, the thing about food and here's what you need to do.
But it got, by chapter three or four, it got more and more serious.
And it was like, so then you start doing, so first you fast and you fast for 10 days and
You just drink lemons and salt.
Oh, then we're back to the fecal matter.
And then you start doing enemas.
This is where you have like a coffee enema.
And then after the enemas, yeah, then you do some wheatgrass juice enemas and then you fast a different way.
You stand on your head and fast.
Gravity.
You know, the barrier to entry of this whole process was very high.
It's not one of these like, it's a four-day fast and you'll change your life.
It's like, no, no, no, this is some serious business.
You are going to end up.
And the reason is that later on in the book, it starts to make some claims and it's not going to be able to make these claims.
If any schmo that's eaten an RV one, once a week can go ahead and try this four day fast.
Okay.
It's a little bit like Scientology.
You're not going to learn about Xenu until you've held the cans a bunch of times.
That's exactly right.
Like you're not ready.
You're not ready for an OT anything.
You're not ready.
And the thing is, this is not a fast.
You're ready for an RV1.
You're ready for an RV1.
This is not a fast that any joker could accomplish, because I knew a lot of people that tried it, but you can't get that far.
When was the last time you knew somebody that just fasted for 10 days and then spent two days doing six interviews?
Having an interest in fasting, speaking of the printing pie graph, an interest in fasting already puts you in a very, very small slice of the pie graph.
Yeah.
And even if you get as far as like lemon juice and cayenne pepper, like that's a real normie kind of like dad boomer sort of fast.
You're talking here about something that's much more like geocaching for your body.
Right.
Friend of this podcast, Jason Finn, he likes to take fasts all the time because, you know, as we've demonstrated on this show for many years –
jason finn continues to pursue a health regimen that will enable him to continue to competitively drink on the other side right so he's got these two competing things on the one hand he's a competitive drinker on the other hand he believes that it's important to have goals if he fasts and jogs he will he will run away from his mortality and that's a it's fascinating he's the he's really the only person i know that has been so single-mindedly dedicated to this idea that
that a five-mile run every day, he can just outpace his alcoholism.
It's really fascinating to watch.
I think you can also smoke.
I think you can also smoke if you run.
I don't know if he smokes anymore.
Well, I'm just saying in general.
I mean, if you are the kind of prophylactic athlete who is looking to pre-address a health condition of some sort, there's a whole bunch of stuff you can do.
You know what I'm saying?
But this RV1-based conspiracy book...
at a certain point of Brown chapter seven or eight, the writer started to talk.
And the Xenu of this book is, uh,
It had another word.
It was something like... Impacted?
I don't know.
Impacted hardened fecal matter.
Let's call it that.
It had a certain cadence to the term.
It wasn't just hardened fecal matter.
It was black hardened fecal matter.
Something like that.
That after you had been through this two-week-long process, and if you had done enough tomato juice enemas,
You would first no longer smell like skunk, but second, you would start to see this material appear.
It's been liberated out of your body.
That's right.
And so when you're fasting, you know, everything gets out of you and then pretty soon you're just, it's just water, right?
Because there's nothing to come out.
And then there's... Oh, you're starving the fecal.
Well, so eventually, right, your tapeworm or whatever, that's all gone too.
Okay, okay.
This maybe was the book where I read about if you have a tapeworm, you should sit in a bathtub full of warm milk, and then the tapeworm will come out.
You have to coax it.
You have to persuade it.
And then you wrap it around a pencil, and then you sit in the bathtub for however long.
Or like a corn on the cob.
You just turn it over gently.
Turn it over gently and just gradually.
I don't know.
That might be a different book.
But so after however many weeks of starvation...
Then this hardened fecal matter will start to appear.
And what it is, what the book claimed was that along the walls of our intestines from all of our years of bad living, there is a coding that even when you fast, even when you do everything that you can, it's so hard.
It has created a... It's like a plaque in your arteries.
Well, it's like an Osama bin Laden in a cave.
How are you going to find that and coax that out?
It's not like a table.
No, no, no.
This is the Tora Bora of your butt.
And the only way you can get it out is through this process.
Well, once it starts to...
Come off once it starts to cleave off of the sides and come out.
And it's apparently, according to the writer, this amazing material.
It's blacker than black.
It has the specific gravity of 10 million.
It's like a black hole, except inside you're a black hole.
It can also fly.
It's not like an ingredient.
You can't use it in anything, but you can use it to power a Mercedes 300D.
Or you can put it in your yard, like a placenta?
I don't know if I would put it in my yard.
I don't know.
It depends.
Do you want to grow the world's largest pineto?
What if it turns out to be good luck?
It's hardened.
It's not going to just—
And what that produced is something that was described in the literature as being like a bicycle inner tube.
And that's what will come out.
So imagine you're going to drop a deuce and out comes the inside of a tire.
Because that's the Tora Bora or Tora Boros eating its own tail, right?
That's coming out.
Now, you're describing something that's more like stalactites, it sounds like.
Yeah.
Well, so I told you once, I think, about the time that I had a really, really bad sinus infection, and it was the spring.
It was one of those spring days in Seattle where it had been raining, and then the sun came out, and I was in my wool jacket, and I had my hat on, but it was kind of sunny, too.
And my whole head was stuffed up, just like, ugh.
I just felt like there was a fucking raccoon living inside my sinuses.
And I did that thing where you kind of like, you try and like snort some stuff down where you can spit it out.
Oh, sure, sure.
We used to call it hawking a loogie.
I tried to hawk a loogie.
Yeah.
And I felt the materiel, the mucus.
Uh-huh.
I felt it come loose from the walls of my head.
Way up.
Way up above my eyes.
Like, way up in the middle between my nose.
Usually an inaccessible mucus area.
Yeah.
From above and in front of my ears.
I felt it all at once.
A bodily phenomenon that we refer to as coming out by the roots.
Like, you're getting something much deeper...
Than a normal, you know, easily, you know, peak mucus, right?
Like you've got to go frack.
That's right.
You're saying you're going real deep and get the roots.
I felt it come loose.
And it was just like turning over a thing of jello and watching it like come loose.
And then I felt the entirety of my head.
Mm-hmm.
Release and it all came out.
It all just went down and it came out and I was bent over the gutter.
Yeah.
Going like, as I, as my, as this mass, this mass that was, that was the size of a,
I don't know, a kitten?
Let's say a bulldog puppy.
It was the size and shape of a bulldog puppy.
So you're just struggling to do your part to accommodate the exit of this.
It's chosen you.
It's time for it to come out.
And I was on a side street.
I was in front of Bill's Off-Broadway Pizza.
And it was in the middle of the day and nobody was there.
And I just kept coming out, though.
Oh, except wait.
My girlfriend was there and she was obviously appalled.
But she was so appalled to me already.
No, this was before we carried cameras.
Anyway, and I just sat there and was just like, whoa.
And the last little bit of it to to let go was from like inside my ears.
Yeah, it was like the look.
And then and it all came out.
And then I was – it was one time in my life where I went from being super sick to being completely healthy.
Did you feel free?
In one 30-second moment.
You must have felt free.
It was the greatest moment of my life.
I still think about it all the time.
I would take that on any part of my body.
But this is what we're looking for with this UFO transporter technology is that ability to basically – because you know after the UFOs, you're the anchorman.
The UFOs are going to run you through the box, right?
You're going to come out – Dr. Manhattan over here.
You know everything will be torn out by the roots and it's just going to go down the alien drain.
Can you even imagine what that would feel like?
More and more, I feel like the first thing I want them to address is my prostate.
Just take it out and remake it.
Just shave it or give me a young one or whatever, one that's not trying to interfere with stuff.
It's just like, I've got all this other stuff.
Stop trying to be clever, prostate.
Yeah, what the fuck are you doing?
What's your problem?
Who asked you to be here?
What it's basically saying is humans weren't meant to live past 50, and so this is not what it was designed to do.
It's just doing... God, that's such a wise way to look at it.
You get a little squeeze bulb like you use to clean off a camera lens, right?
It's just that that was never designed to be 51.
No, it was not.
No, it was not.
It's lost its way.
It hasn't lost its purpose.
It still has a purpose.
It's just lost its way.
Yes, the UFOs are going to go through.
They're going to take all the mucus out.
My cuticles are going to be repaired.
There's going to be so much.
Can you imagine your joints?
They liberate whatever it is that make your joints the way that it is.
Think about your knees with your knees, Ed.
Think about that.
You know what I'm saying?
You shouldn't be throwing anybody.
Every time I bend down to look at something on a low shelf now, once I get down there, I'm like, oh, why the fuck did you do this?
You got to get back up, man.
You got to get back up there.
I have a pain in my shin now.
If I bend down to do anything, I get this, oh, I get this feeling I'm in my right shin.
And that's been the last week.
It's a new thing.
My shin was never meant to be this old.
The nutritionists, the Bastyr nutritionists that are listening to this show are right now going, ah, see, this is the cake and ice cream.
It's not that it makes you think weird when you do a podcast the next day.
It's that when you bend down your squeezer bulb and it's just like, no, fuck you.
Shut up.
Shut up.
You're just looking for a reason.
anyway the hardened fecal matter guy okay said after the hardened this is in the book this is the book so you're checking out you're ready to pay your bill this is in the book well so anyway somebody one of the ladies that had that got me into eating raw food also bought the book and then was like you have to read this so it was at a time when anybody that said you have to read this and put a book in my hands i read it yeah sure and it was it was how it was a different time but
thank you it was why i ended up reading frederick actually as a fan's notes because somebody was like you got to read this all right all right so i read it and the and what's what's crazy is by a chapter 11 no let's say chapter 12 because i don't want to put this guy in chapter 11 no by chapter 12 he can still reorganize he still can't right there's no chapter 11 anymore you just everybody gets a do-over no it's just on route to chapter 13 i think
Anyways, is a fecal matter... So how far in percentage-wise are we at this point?
And does it have a soft landing?
Because you're already up to... You're in Chapter 11 or so.
We're talking about fecal matter.
Is there a soft landing at the end?
Did I ever tell you about the book The Long Walk?
I don't know if you have.
The Long Walk is a book about... Oh, no.
I'm sorry.
The Long Walk is a book by Stephen King.
A Long Walk...
Let's see.
Is it a long walk?
It's not a long walk to water.
I don't know what that is.
It's a long walk.
A long walk.
And it's not a song by Jill Scott.
A Long Walk book.
Oh, Jill Scott.
Okay.
I'm one behind you.
A Long Walk.
The True Story of a Trek to Freedom.
By somebody with a, let's go, Polish fella.
Oh, look, Slavomir Ravowitz.
Yes, that is the book.
Okay.
So this is a book by this man who escaped from a Soviet labor camp in Siberia.
And with his little squad of various escaped people during World War II, they walked from northern Siberia down through the Gobi Desert over the Himalayas to India.
It was a very long walk.
And it's a wonderful, wonderful tale.
Extraordinary tale.
And it's a very well-written and short book.
And it's one of these things where as they walk along, I don't want to give too much away, but not everybody makes it.
Although they make it.
But anyway, in that book, you get to the last 20 pages of the book and all of a sudden...
an event happens in the book where you're like, what?
Like, like, um, uh, there's just no way I cannot tell you because I want you to read the book.
I want everybody to read this book.
Okay.
But you get to the last 20 pages and you're like,
It's not yet to Calcutta.
Okay, okay.
And it's like, what have I been reading this whole time?
Oh, I see.
They spot something in the Himalayas.
It's not a turns out.
It is a real turns out.
Okay, okay.
Yeah, so it's highly recommended.
And the thing is, it was turned into a movie.
Mm-hmm.
That maybe some people have seen a movie that I think was starring some famoses.
It came out not very long ago.
A long walk movie.
And it turned into the movie The Way Back.
The Way Back.
Thank you.
You're doing such a good job of the Internet.
Peter Weir.
Oh, Peter Weir.
He's the fellow that did Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Picnic at Hanging Rock.
That's a wild movie.
This is from 2010, and it's got Ed Harris in it and Colin Farrell.
Oh, I enjoy them.
Right?
They're good.
They're fun.
And the thing about The Long Walk, or The Way Back, is it does the whole book pretty well, and then it gets to that last 20 pages of the book, which are the key to the book, I think, where you're just like...
what what have i been what and the movie just ignores it oh that's a shame completely ignores it because it's so like say what it's no wonder alan moore took his name off it that's ridiculous it didn't change it didn't fit into the crazy movie that they were making and so the movie just ends up being like
A wild adventure instead of like a wild adventure and then a... But that's the thing about this book about the heart and fecal pattern.
Yes.
Yes.
Was that after it comes out, then apparently...
Your intestines are reborn-ed.
Whoa, just like the UFOs.
That's right.
Your intestines are suddenly the pink.
They're all pink and plump.
Just like the day you were born.
Like a baby.
The little baby.
And then every bit of food that you eat, every time you eat an RV1, every time you take a little sip of wheatgrass juice, it goes perfectly.
into your body through these very pink membranes, just as God designed it to do.
You have new efficiencies.
The machine is becoming more efficient.
It's not going to have to try and get Osama, Obama.
Sorry, a lot of people don't remember that Obama, Osama, you don't have to get... Osama bin Obama.
Is that what you had, the Korean food?
You don't have to get that out of a cave now.
Just think about the time that opens up.
If you drank a wheatgrass juice or ate an RV1 and your intestines were lined with hardened fecal matter, it would just go straight through.
You wouldn't even get any nutrition.
It would literally bounce off.
It's going right into the mouth of your tapeworm.
But once this stuff comes off, then your body is perfect.
You only need to eat two tablespoons of grass a day.
And it goes perfectly in.
And then you don't have to run to stave off your alcoholism.
You wouldn't even need alcoholism.
You would just be living in a glow, a warm glow.
And the final chapter of this book, he starts to talk about...
being in the mountains, because that's where he went.
Are you talking about the Polish fella or the hardened fecal man?
No.
Polish guy, I think, was just eating whatever kind of yak fur he could get his hands on.
So he was not living in the clear and the light.
He had never met Xenu.
He was not the key master.
Was it 707?
Is that what it was?
The plane?
707.
Oh, they dropped the people in the volcano?
You know, we're already violating a lot of copyright with this.
The one in South America where they all ate each other.
Yeah, we got no soup cans.