Ep. 393: "A Little Grace"
Hello.
Hi John.
Merlin, man.
I'm twiddling a lot of knobs here.
Oh, yeah?
What are you trying to dial it in?
Well, you know, I got my DAW, my digital audio what's-it.
Right?
Your what's-it?
Yeah.
I think I tried to get a little cute with it, and now I'm paying for it.
It seems like you're a little gamey.
You got a little game stage.
Oh, I'm a little game.
Let me turn it down.
Hang on.
All right.
Is that better?
Any difference?
That's nice.
Is it?
No, that's nice.
Yeah.
You're peaking a little bit.
Now I am?
No, no, you were.
You were just a little bit up there toward the top of it.
John, I'm out of my depth.
I'm out of my depth here.
I could really use the help.
I use this device.
It's got a lot of dip switches.
Oh, really?
You ever deal with dip switches?
Well, you know, I love a dip switch.
Yeah.
You know, if I had a car that had a bunch of dip switches in it, I'd just be flipping them all the time.
But, you know, any machine that's got a switch on it rather than like a menu, I'd rather hit a switch any day than I would pull down a menu.
Yeah.
Here's the thing you got to know about me is I get things.
This is also in my very short career in development.
I had a practice where I would keep working on it until it wasn't obviously broken.
So I do that with my DAW as well, which is I get it into some kind of a relatively dependable state, and then I try not to touch it.
You're a fiddler.
You'll fiddle with dip switches.
You'll sit there with the manual and do the dip switches.
Mm-hmm.
No, no, no, no.
I would rather set it and forget it.
Like in all things in life, I want to set it and forget it.
Set it and forget it.
I'd like to do that with my relationships.
I just want to set them and forget them.
I want my car to just set it and forget it.
And things that require constant fiddling drives me crazy.
I hate to borrow your bit here, but it's one of those things where when we got the computers and we got the internet, there was a wonderful future that was promised unto us.
And you like to set it and forget it.
It's fun to see new things, but then sometimes you get a little switch them up and something happens and then it's unset and forgotten.
Yeah.
And now you've got to recreate it.
And then also sometimes the computer just stops working in some fashion and it's difficult to know why.
That's all I'm going to say about that.
I don't want to make a big deal about it, but I am fiddling with a lot of knobs.
For some reason, you know, I don't – I'm not a Facebook person.
I don't – I'm not a practitioner of their dark arts.
But I have people – you know, there are some fan sites over there.
I have my own profile.
I go there.
you know on a on a active week i'll go there once a day sometimes it's once every few days but lately uh facebook you know you then you scroll down you see all of the timeline of all of the people you went to high school with talking about q anon and all of the i've heard that's quite a thing realizing all your friends are into q and i've heard that's a thing yeah it's a thing it's a thing
But there's all the wonderful fans of Roderick on the Line and of the Long Winters and of Omnibus.
A big roadwork community, right?
Roadwork community of friendly fire people.
They're all on there.
They're having scintillating conversations.
I like to pop in and most of the time it's read-only.
memory, but sometimes it's random access.
And, you know, I do, you know, I bop around.
But lately, just I'm talking about the last few weeks, Facebook, after I scroll down about three comments, it just, it just blanks out.
Can't scroll down past three comments.
Can't look into the past
More than the top three posts.
Okay.
And it does it across all of the different sites.
And I'm there and I'm like, did I not –
Do an update of some kind?
Did I not?
Have I violated the terms of service?
Check your firmware.
Got to check the firmware.
I got to check the oil.
Got to check the fluids, the windshield wiper.
Absolutely.
You know, I'm flipping all the dip switches on it.
Can't figure it out.
And the problem is don't really care enough.
So it's done that Internet thing where it is an absolute annoyance.
But I don't care quite enough to like do anything about it.
And so I'm always annoyed by it.
And I never fix it because I don't care enough to fix it.
But not fixing it, I stare it in the face every day.
Not every day.
No, I know.
I know what you mean.
I go through that all the time.
Like we've had some, you know, these days, the days go by before you notice three o'clock.
And there's all kinds of things that I've kind of let go to seed because I keep thinking mañana, mañana.
Sure, sure.
And so I got a hand to myself today.
I woke up, I went to bed early, got up kind of early and I knocked down a lot of what I like to call mosquito tasks.
which are like these little things that are kind of like what you're describing, which is like I wouldn't put it on my calendar.
But if enough of these pile up, you start to feel a little bit like some kind of hoarder.
You got all this stuff you got to do.
So, yeah, this morning I got a bunch of stuff done.
I cleaned out a cooler, which was really gross.
And I brought in some junk from the backyard that was really unsightly.
And that's a nice feeling.
You get four or five mosquito tasks.
And here's the secret and the beauty part.
which is once you get rolling, you know what I'm saying?
You get a head of steam on, and now you're like, give me more mosquito tasks.
I want to fix all the things.
Although the streams are swollen, you're going to keep those doggies rolling?
Oh, yeah.
Rolling, rolling, rolling.
No question about it.
Mm-hmm.
I'm... Yeah!
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The mosquito tasks, boy, they bog me down.
And I know what you're saying.
You go out, you drain the...
You drain the pond.
You get your – you brush the Beebles off the thingamabob.
And by the end of the day, you're like, what did I do today?
Well, I did all these things that were – that needed to get done.
Yep.
But I don't – I'm super not good at that or not good at tasks.
It helps to write them down.
It helps – I have a text file as I do.
I have a text file of all these kinds of things.
I have one just for tech annoyances, which is all stuff that like I think I could do something about if I spent a little bit of time with it.
There's stuff like that.
But you're not a big writer down, are you?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, no, no.
And, you know, a list, list makers, list making.
You can you can drive yourself crazy with that.
I know from I know from crazy.
Like you can definitely go a little nuts on doing too much writing down.
My wonderful grandmother, as I've mentioned before, was an inveterate list maker to the point where she also had a meta list of all of her lists.
And as she's waiting for a doctor's appointment, she'd pull out all these scraps of paper and do her crosstabs on figuring out what lists needed to be updated with new lists.
Wow.
I almost never, never make a list and –
And I don't know – it's one of those things where I'm living in a world.
I'm in a world.
I'm at the grocery store and the person in front of me and I are both people.
We're both living in the exact same world.
Somehow our lives brought us to that grocery store at the same time.
This person and I cannot be that different really.
But they're making lists and I'm not.
And so we might as well be living in –
in France and alternate France, you know?
Like, we might as well.
Like, it's like somehow the timeline got split and there's like a second France?
Yeah, there's this other France that this person lives in where they're making lists.
Oh, maybe in Seu or Prisci Small.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Prisci Small.
So that's the kind of crazy thing.
Like you see somebody in a fancy car, you see somebody in a cheap car, you're like, yeah, okay, I get it.
But which one makes lists and which one doesn't?
Oh, that's a different you and I. Yeah, probably.
They both make lists and they are closer together than me.
uh the the like the outlier the guy that's that never makes you have a lot of mental lists though like oh you fail your failures and your near failures i do is that a list you keep running in your head you feel like i do you know lately uh we've been saying grace at the dinner table we we went uh we went to dinner over at the uh at the ken jennings house and ken right before dinner he said you know
He kind of, he looked at my daughter and he said, now we're going to say grace.
So, you know, buckle up.
And she was like, oh.
And so then we all said grace at the table.
And the next night when we were at home, and it was, you know, a lovely little gratitude.
The next night when we got home, she said, we should say grace.
And I was like, we absolutely should.
So she made up a little grace.
Thank you for this food and drink that we're lucky enough to have.
And thank you for all the good things.
And then we all kind of nod.
Sometimes I say, and sometimes her mom says, you know, like, namaste or whatever.
Are you appropriating Philip Glass?
51515151.
It's become like a nice little thing that we do.
I think it's lovely.
I could never get away with that, but I think it's lovely.
Well, it's nice because what it does is it arrests the thing where you haven't even sat down in your chair yet and you look over and your kid is already shoveling food in their mouth.
Yeah.
And it's like, hey, whoa, slow down.
Who do you think brought you those chicken fingers?
Yeah, everybody's got to get here first.
You don't start eating until – oh, and her mom does this thing where she's like, you guys start without me, she says from the other room.
No, I don't care for that.
No, and I always look at my daughter and I say, we don't start without mama.
And she goes, I know.
And then we sit there.
And from the other room, oh, go ahead and start without me.
It's just like we've been doing this for eight years.
We have never once started without you.
This is how you get an eating disorder.
This is disordered eating.
Like I've told you before, I had a mate for a long time who I think got pretty weird because the dinner table is where familial tensions would get played out in front of everybody.
And everybody was trying to control their food in a different way.
And I think pretty soon you're a French model in alternate France.
You know what I'm saying?
Exactly.
Thin as a rail and getting a Karen Carpenter.
I think there's two lovely things that you can do at dinner.
One is well-known and one is less known.
First of all, I feel like people who are not religious should be able to have a religion without the religion.
You know what I mean?
Hear, hear.
Absolutely.
Church is nice.
Institution of religion, not a huge fan.
I think it's nice.
You've already said it.
I'm not going to repeat it.
But taking a minute to stop here and we're going to express gratitude for what we have, I think that could hardly be a nicer thing.
The other thing my friend Richard used to do with my ex and his current at the time is, you know what they do before they ate, they didn't pray, but they kiss each other on the lips right before they start eating.
And I think that's nice too.
Oh, that is nice.
Isn't that kind of nice?
Yeah, it's really nice.
You don't always remember to kiss people.
Yeah, kiss them right on the lips.
What's dinner time?
Are you going to use that mouth?
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, well, we got a thing around here where at a certain age, just not very long ago, my daughter all of a sudden was like, kiss me on the lips.
And I was like, all right.
And she was like,
She was like, the lips.
People kiss on the lips.
And I was like, yeah, they do.
They don't just kiss each other on the forehead like has been your experience your whole life.
Kiss being kissed on the forehead and told to.
We're a lip kissing family.
Any gender, any combination, you can kiss them on the lips.
Kiss them right on the lips.
So, you know, you know how the the Rodericks are a little bit like.
i don't know i don't see your mom being a big lip kisser no no no we're a little reticent about about like displays of affection that go over our imaginary line it can become it becomes unseemly yeah yeah sure you're my child i like you and everything but like ease up with the with all the affection yeah
But but she was like, you know, she wanted she wanted to see what lip kissing was like.
And, you know, my daughter is probably like just natively more sensual than I am.
She just is like she likes experience.
She wants to, you know, like and I kind of sit back and go like, yeah, I mean, I can guess with that.
Feels like I don't need to touch it.
She's a physical.
You feel like she's kind of a physical person.
She's living in the world.
She's living in it.
She's living in the world.
She's not on the sidelines.
She's in it.
She's not in alternate France like me or the other guy.
I can't even tell which one of us is in alternate France.
It's probably me.
And so, so yeah, we, so, so we started doing the lip kisses and you know, it's, it's, it's definitely true that if one of us is uncomfortable with it, it's me, but it's not uncomfortable.
It's just like, okay, how's that?
Enjoy it while you can.
There are ways in which I feel like I've always, at least from my POV, always had a good relationship with my kid.
And she likes me.
I like her.
Mom likes her.
She likes mom.
And of course, as always, since the beginning, there's oscillations on a few days basis of who she likes more.
But despite the fact that I feel like our relationship in many ways has never been better, she's also pushing 13.
So I'm not really allowed to touch her anymore.
Yeah.
She doesn't like being – not just me.
She just doesn't like being touched.
And sometimes if I've done something really nice, I get an out-of-nowhere hug and a kiss.
And like I really miss that.
Scott Simpson years ago was talking about how all he has to do is stick his hand out at like a 30-degree angle and his son grabs his hand when they're walking around.
And he's like, yeah, now I don't get that anymore.
I'm like, oh, that must suck.
No, that's me.
I miss that.
Maybe I'm more sensual than I realized.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I do treasure it.
I treasure these moments.
And I've been lately because we say this grace at dinner.
I have at some point she introduced the idea of saying something that you were grateful for.
I don't know where that came from.
She said she showed up at dinner one time and she was like, thank you for this food and drink and blotted out of that.
We that was that we have.
It's like she doesn't say that was placed before us because she doesn't use the passive on it.
She knows how it got there.
And so she says, you know, thank you for this food and drink that either mama or daddy made at this point.
juncture in our lives.
I don't, I don't know exactly her wording, but then she was like, say something you're grateful for.
And it kind of, you know, it does, it's not like it goes around the table.
There's only three of us, but when it was my turn, you know, my lists of failures and disappointments that I carry around with me all the time, kind of normally exclude me from the
thinking at all about anything that i'm grateful for because whatever i can think of that i have gratitude for is immediately you know shouldered aside or clouded with conditionals or you know something yeah yeah you're sure you have a torrent of asterisks coming at you right that's right every every wonderful thing i'm just like well except that in this context you know what the world is on fire whatever
But she's not interested in hearing that.
She doesn't want Daddy to do a soliloquy here.
We've got hot food in front of us.
You know, like, get in, get out.
And so I started I started saying these things, you know, and I'm not I'm not thinking about this.
This is just the shit that comes out of me.
Yeah, just straight off the dome.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was like the first couple of times I said, well, I had some I had some triumphs and I had some defeats today.
And I guess the triumphs in the end.
outweighed the defeats i guess and and you know and the the two of them would kind of you know look at me and like slow slow not the tone we're looking for and then you know then back and they were both like i'm grateful for my family and i'm grateful for these times i'm like well you know i feel like the defeats
Didn't quite, and there were a couple of times where I was like, yeah, the defeats, I had more defeats than victories today, but I'm grateful that I'm still sucking air.
And as, as the, as the weeks went by, I realized that if I, if I had to, um, lay them out, if I had to like describe each one, all right, what was the victory?
Yeah.
And, uh, and what was the defeat?
I could name the victories, uh,
But the defeats, I couldn't put my finger on them.
Because defeats are in some ways – well, there are the kinds of defeats one has that are like very sort of unavoidable.
Like if you lost a court case or something.
But a lot of times failure is an absence.
And sometimes it's difficult to articulate feelings about an absence.
Yeah.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
A couple of days ago, I was pulling weeds and I had this tenacious weed and I pulled it really hard.
You know, I was really leaning back on it and then it snapped and I punched myself in the ball.
I love it so much.
I like that more than the Star Wars tweet.
I love that.
And you're right, it is an underappreciated tweet.
It's a clear defeat.
You know, like that one at the dinner table, it's like, well...
There was one thing that didn't go right today because, you know, it was a full punch.
Like I had to spend 10 minutes recuperating from it.
It was like how many times in your life does that happen?
You were pulling at like below waist level and you lost – pulled or lost – and so you just jammed the underside of your big man fist right into your bathing suit area.
Yeah, that's right.
Just kapow.
But in most cases, it's like you're saying.
The defeats –
We're just a sort of sense of absence of I don't know what a different victory or just just like mute.
And so I was so I realized in this kind of like small little gratitude moment.
That I was I was showing up at the dinner table and it was another example of this backpack I carry around all the time.
A backpack that where I was like, what exactly were your defeats today?
And I would you know, I'm not saying this at the table.
They're all eating their scabetti, but I'm like.
You said that – You're doing a meta review at this point.
Yeah.
Ongoing monologue, personal commentary from your Welsh troll.
Now at this point, you're like my grandma with her list of lists.
Now you're casting about for like how do I frame my failures.
Right.
Well, you know, I'm – so they're used to sometimes at dinner me putting my fork down and staring at my plate with a furrowed brow for a few moments.
Like they don't – they just –
end up talking about something else while while all of a sudden i'm fixated on a on a uh like a like a leaf a leafy green but i but i definitely felt like you didn't have any defeats today what defeat did you have yeah it's like well the general feeling of defeat well no that's not you said that you had
You had victories today and you had defeats.
And yet when you say what were your victories, you can run them down.
You can name five things that you did that were a success.
And you can't name a single defeat.
except a kind of vague sense.
Like that doesn't outweigh your victories.
That's not equal to.
One is a number of nouns that generate a positive emotion.
And the other one is your personality.
Yeah, right.
It's not as simple as just saying, well, here's three of these and three of those, column A, column B. It's like, no, this is my, it's like me.
It's like if somebody says to me, like, what are you anxious about?
I'm like, yeah, right.
I mean, how about everything?
Well, that's the thing.
I figured that my defeats are just that I had to hang out with myself all day.
But you had to hang out with yourself while you were scoring all these small victories.
And it was like, yeah, I know, but I mean, look at this guy.
I couldn't...
I wouldn't join a club that would have me, you know, except here I am.
I heard an anecdote today about Studio 54 that Steve, what's his name, had a famous line along the lines of the Groucho Marx bit, which is that when they talk about like how picky he is about who's allowed in and he's like, I would not let myself into this club.
Like I am too unhandsome to come to Studio 54.
Yeah.
yeah well it's i mean i say the same thing about up about all my records it's like i don't think i would like the long winters oh boy i mean you know if i was just like
If I had to buy a record, I don't think I would buy a long-winded record.
I want to read you something.
We don't have enough distortion.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, it's true.
Well, you know, you got some good ACDC parts that you made Mike Squires play.
This is something I wrote on the air, and this is a true story.
So there was a thing that happened a few weeks ago.
I'm going to peg it to around July 15th, which was that there was a big hack at Twitter, and basically everybody who was a verified user –
And I think anybody who had changed or attempted to change their password in the last 30 days got locked out.
Now, that second group, they got locked out for a good long time.
I think like over a week.
But when things did come back, I thought this was actually very funny.
But having fun with, oh, the blue checks aren't here.
The mods are off sipping mimosas.
Let's go crazy and take over the website because the blue checks aren't here to, well, actually us or whatever.
Yeah.
Lol.
And something – this is – what I'm going to read you here is a true story that happened and it felt appropriate to post this on the internet that night when I got my posting privileges back.
Went out to the garage to get more toilet paper and I tried to carry way too much at once.
And since I was wearing very loose sweatpants with my phone in the pocket, my pants fell down in the driveway and I had to shuffle like a crab until I got inside.
Pound sign blue check life.
So here's where we get back to Nora Ephron.
Everything is copy.
That's the thing.
And like Nora Ephron says, or is purported to have said, when you slip on a banana peel, everybody laughs at you.
But when you tell the story of slipping on a banana peel and you do it well, people are more likely to laugh with you.
And I do think about that.
And you brought a lot of joy to my life when you punched yourself in the balls.
That was pretty goddamn funny.
That was a very idiocracy moment.
Well, that's I think a lot of a lot of the balance.
Both you and I have a certain percentage of our posts that where we are the goat of the of the post.
Right.
There's a there's an aspect to the way that I perform on the Internet.
Where, you know, and, and perform in all of my shows where like self aggrandizement, self mythology is a part of the, is a part of my shtick where, you know, I, I always find a kind of like, Oh, as a, as a big pirate, I sometimes like a cold drink of milk, you know, like I just have that, you know, I don't have to tell you.
but part of that also requires that you, you pop that balloon.
Sometimes you,
mock yourself you can't you know you can't believe it and live in the world one of the great recipes for being dislikable is and you see this this is a very blue check thing is that whole like you know like for what's the guy's name is it john but there's that one guy ding-a-ling right-wing guy who uses his twitter account to like yell at you know the place that delivered his sandwich and stuff like that
Everybody does that.
You've done that with airlines.
I've done that with airlines.
But the thing is, if you are constantly taking yourself that seriously that you are frequently demanding justice for your sandwich on a regular basis, you don't seem like a serious person and you seem like kind of an asshole.
If you can't have any metaphysical distance...
from your own dumb personality to be able to look at it and laugh, you're going to be a serially unhappy person and a nationally unlovable character.
Well, yeah, and I think one thing that's true of both you and me.
We're not so different, you and I. That's right.
We're just – we're in adjacent France.
We're just two guys trying to get out of France.
But your persona and mine, our internet personas, which are different from our actual personalities, we are kidding at our own expense.
But more often than it might seem to the casual observer, playing with our facsimile, playing with our bits, playing with our avatars.
And you see sometimes people come flying in out of left field.
I don't know whether they just started following or whether they've been following us both for 10 years, listening to all our shows and still don't get caught.
jokes sometimes yeah but you know come out of nowhere and they're like that sounds arrogant and it's like wow really people are dying man that's the whole that's the whole bit it does sound arrogant that's my whole bit I do that every single day I know
I'm not going to give that up.
I'm not about to yet give that up.
This is why I mute everything immediately.
But I'm not about to give that up because you can't be troubled to find one trowel of context for what it means.
Right.
But it's key, I think, to – I mean everybody we know has a – some people have a lot –
like Dave Hill, Todd Berry, they occupy a, a, a fursona of themselves.
Yeah.
That is very real.
Todd Berry really is that way.
He's absolutely that big of an asshole.
And yet it's also a fursona, you know, he's, he's cosplaying.
It's a bit, but not a bit.
It's a bit, but not a bit.
I mean, I, I have spent many times with Todd where he's like taking a selfie and
And I'm and I kind of like edge into the picture.
And he's like, yeah, can you not be in my picture?
Got to read the room.
Got to read the room.
Got to know what the bid is.
If you don't know, you know, it's like Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, you know, don't come in until you know what I forget the word they use, but until you know what the play is.
Don't come in until you know what the fuck.
If I'm here trying to sell Jonathan Price some very, very nice Florida real estate by tacitly attacking his manhood, like, don't come in here and cock me because it's going to look weird and don't screw up my deal because you didn't read the room.
Heard that.
Heard that.
Well, so... Yeah, go.
Well, no, I... No, no, no, no.
Sorry.
I'll fix it in post.
Ha, ha, ha.
Fursona.
Fursona.
Oh, boy.
Oh, no.
Yeah, that's the corona.
I get the corona every minute of every day.
But no, you know, Merlin, things are good.
The one thing that's changed around here.
I was going to ask about this.
I had a really good segue for this.
Are you ready for my segue?
Oh, OK.
Let's hear it.
And not the one I ride on.
All I wanted to say before, just in passing, something I forget at my peril is that it's difficult.
It's more difficult to be angry and...
if you're being helpful or grateful.
And by helpful, I don't mean posting through it.
But if you're actively helping someone else or you're actively being grateful, it's difficult to have that freeform anger.
And I forget that at my peril.
I get so up my own ass and I get so frustrated and yes, so anxious that I forget I could make this go away right now by going and doing something nice for somebody.
I know that's a really corny thing to say, but I do believe that's true.
And to me, that's why I really like that you guys are having a little grace.
yeah yeah a little and i and i'm conscious of all of my friends that have uh that have children that are older than 12 they all say the same thing which is treasure these moments when she still likes you and she still wants to hang out with you and she does you know she does still like me and she does want to hang out with me and i and i am treasuring it you don't you don't get any points for not kissing your kid
Yeah, right.
Right.
And, and, you know, and we're very physically affectionate, right?
I mean, we do, we, we have a lot of hugs and we have a lot of tickles and we, we spend a lot of time together kind of curled up.
Although she's always, even when she was like two years old, you could, you could, she would sit on your lap, you could hug her, you could hold her.
But then it was enough.
She's like a cat.
Well, hang on.
Don't save it for the show.
But she's like a cat in that sense of a cat will let you do all kinds of stuff until they realize they're vulnerable and then they bite you and shit.
Yeah.
And so she would just – when she could first walk, she would –
At a certain point, be done.
And I had I had to get away from you as soon as she could.
You know, I had friends that had kids that were little cuddle bugs that would just sit and cuddle with them for hours.
And when when you know, when she got a little bit older, I was like, you know, don't you want to just a little we'll just watch TV or something.
You just cuddle.
And she was like, yeah, yeah, we cuddled.
And I'm like, yeah, all right.
We cuddled.
We did.
I mean I could go another round.
And she's like, no, that's – like she just always had – she had an amount of cuddle that filled her up.
And she's still that way.
There will always be – I would always sit there for another minute longer than she would.
But the idea that one day that that's not going to be there –
is actually in my own emotional life, like a return to normal, right?
Before she was born, nobody cuddled with me and my whole life when I was a kid, you know, nobody cuddled with me when I was in, when I was in young relationships, you know how, who's got time to cuddle?
Like we don't, you know, we had somewhere to be.
And, um, I never, never just sat curled up under a, under an Afghan, um,
with anybody.
So, so when, you know, when I had a child that was, that was little and liked me this, and I'm in the middle of it right now, like it's peak cuddle for me.
But when, but when it goes away, I'm hoping I survive it.
Uh, I hope, I hope that it goes by easily because I just kind of, we'll just sort of retract, uh,
to regular which is like right you resume your normal operations back in original france yeah that's right no no cuddles for me anymore no and you know and now it's now everything's my fault again and that's great i mean that's where i'm that's as it should be
John, one of the problems with Facebook, I deactivated my Facebook account when Christ was a corporal.
I briefly had an Instagram account, and then I briefly had another Instagram account.
And I finally, I think as you know, was like, I got to get out of this.
And I miss it.
And it sucks.
And here's the problem.
All my friends have Instagram.
All my friends are enjoying Instagram.
They're learning about yoga pants.
and sticks that you can use to hit an elevator button and stuff like that.
But my problem is, whether this is on the Twitter, clicking a link, or whether it's going directly to the site, unless I log in, I'm unable to see anything but the thumbnail on the website.
I feel like this is the day that I'm most bummed because it appears that you may have a new resident in your household.
Yeah, so I'm living here.
I'm living here.
And really, in my whole life, as we've discussed many times, I feel like I'm living on borrowed time everywhere I go.
I want to come back to that at some point.
Are you a haunted man?
When my daughter was in vitro, her mother lived in a two-bedroom apartment in downtown Seattle.
And she had two cats.
And both cats were...
uh awful one of them one of them was a cat that was uh deranged it had at one point because as you know you know my daughter's mother was married to your friend and mine uh sean nelson singer of harvey danger and when they were friend of the show very good friend of the show friend of the show he's never listened to the show but he's a friend of it no but i can still talk to him about jason faulkner and stuff
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You guys – you got that side – you got a sidebar going.
It's going to last a lifetime.
I respect his taste a lot.
He is a – he's a great curator.
Did you know he met Robin Hitchcock?
Culture.
I did know that.
Yes.
Anyway –
He and she had two cats and one of them, the one that was deranged, I think, was not the one that fell out of their third story window and survived.
But the deranged one was one of those cats that when I say one of those cats, this is the only cat I've ever seen do it.
So it's not one of those cats.
This cat was a cat.
that in its broken mind could not differentiate between the most violent, angry hiss and what you did in a normal day when someone petted you.
That's not wholesome.
That's not wholesome at all.
You'd pet this cat and then it would rear back like a viper.
Like the most violent.
You could smell the...
the cat food from two days ago come out of this cat in this like evil hiss.
And then it, then it would go back to purring and, and needing you like, you know, with their little need, need pause.
I've dated that cat.
And I'm just like, what the fuck?
This cat is, this cat sucks.
Yeah.
Straighten it out, you piece of shit.
And as it, as it got older, it went more hiss, less cuddle.
More hiss, less bliss.
More hiss, less bliss.
Mm-hmm.
That cat was no good.
The cat's name was Genghis, if that gives you a sense of its personality.
Oh, wow.
Naming his destiny, yeah.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
The other cat was a fine cat, Zelda, named for Zelda Fitzgerald.
uh a fine a fine cat until zelda stopped grooming herself and i think zelda might have been the one that fell out the window huh was zelda depressed i think zelda had kitty depression well this is you shouldn't name a cat zelda i mean that's it's like naming your cat manson like what do you expect your your name is your destiny in that case too right and um
And so these two cats, the one that honestly should have been put to sleep when it was six months old because God just made some mistakes.
It's a mercy killing, but the mercy is for the household.
Yeah.
Just, I mean, for the world, right?
Sure.
Nobody wants this.
The cat itself doesn't want it.
If you go back and kill baby Genghis, would you?
Would you?
I think you would.
I think you'd smother baby Genghis.
Zelda, I think it's probably Genghis that brought Zelda's depression on.
Can you imagine living with a thing like that?
I can't imagine that.
Your only cat friend is an asshole?
Yeah.
Of course that's going to rub off.
So Zelda stopped cleaning herself and it was just like, ah, Zelda.
So I'd go over to visit my very close lady friend.
And there were these two monsters.
And, you know, she's – she inherited the cats in the divorce because our good friend, friend of the show, Sean Nelson, you know, was not able to care for another living thing.
And so she – and she wanted them –
And has an ability.
Did it have that implied question mark to it?
No, no, no.
I think she wanted them, but she has that.
She was in for the duration.
She was going to see this through to the end.
Okay.
And she has the sort of hippie blind spot of like –
Sort of, I mean, it's a wonderful, it's a wonderful cloak to wear, a wonderful Technicolor dream coat to be able to put on where everything is fine.
Everything is fine.
Oh, the hissing cat.
It's fine.
I'm sure that, you know, like she just, she doesn't, she definitely does not sit down at the dinner table and start cataloging her faults and also does not
She doesn't see color.
And by color, I mean problems.
She just doesn't see problems.
But so our daughter was on the way.
Our daughter was busy being built inside of this mall.
Work in progress.
And I said, look, I don't have a lot of, you know, I don't have a lot of say.
I mean, there are only a few things that I'm really going to stand my ground on.
And for the most part, I go along to get along.
I try to be everybody's friend.
100%.
But I don't want to bring our little girl into this world.
And by this world, I mean the murder cat and the dirty cat.
The two together just feel like an unsafe environment.
Yeah.
And so I know that they're your little babies or something.
You've had them for some amount of time that you presumably developed a feeling of care for them.
But they belong – they need to go live on a farm.
They belong somewhere else.
Because, you know, you've got your trichodecanosis or whatever, your trichodecophobia that you get.
If you don't think you've got it, that's how you know you've got it.
That's how you know you've got it.
And I think she had it because she liked these cats.
And there was no reason that you would.
The trichinosis is very persuasive.
She's breathing in the cat litter.
And I was like, I don't want that in the baby's bassinet.
Yeah.
And I don't want these cats coming in in the night and smothering her to death.
Steal a baby's breath is what they say.
They steal the baby's breath.
It's right there in the books.
Those legends aren't for nothing.
No, no.
Every stereotype has a basis in reality, especially if it's an asshole cat.
an asshole cat is stealing baby's breath.
So I said, they, they gotta go.
I'm sorry.
I'm not, you know, there's not, look, I'm not telling you that you've got to convert to my religion.
I'm not even saying, uh, that, that you're going to let me, you're going to let me in this house.
But my, if that's true, my last word as I, as you kick me out of here is that these cats have to go with me and they're going to go with me just as far as the nearest farm.
Um,
And she found a home for them.
And you go, huh, how does a cat get up there?
Oh, this is the kind of person, we're not going to use a disparaging term, but there are people who are somewhat better built to handle cats at scale, even when they're assholes.
There's a cat over there.
There's a cat over here.
You walk in the house and you're like, do I get to pet a cat?
There's like a lot of cats in this house.
Can't pet any of them because they all...
are they all have their own thing that they're doing and it's like i'm in a cat i'm in a house full of cats i don't get a single there's not one of these cats that wants to just sit here on the couch with me and let me pet it nope in fact you're not allowed to see the cats you can't the cats don't want to be seen except for the one on top of the refrigerator and don't try and touch it because it's gonna because it's gonna bat you away
And these two cats, the dirty cat and the psycho cat, went into this house and never came out.
They went in there and whatever it is that they needed, they got.
And love was all around us.
And we got them out of the house and we scoured the apartment so that when the baby arrived, there was –
Let's hope only just the faintest little whiff of litter under the couch.
And it was no sickness.
No.
And the thing is, I'm allergic.
I'm allergic to cats.
So, you know, so I was always there was always a kind of sticky eyed like that.
But fast forward now, nine years.
There's been a there's been a when you put it that way.
It seems like such a long time.
It's a long time.
Oh, man.
There's been a cat-shaped hole in my daughter's mother's partner's heart.
And, you know, I grew up with cats.
My mom loves cats.
We all love cats.
Even the worst cat.
And so the idea of a cat has just been, you know, floating around, you know, every once in a while.
Somebody would say, what about, what about cat?
There's an idea in the air.
I'm very familiar with this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then there would be, you know, there's, there's a million reasons not to get a cat and we'd run down all those reasons.
And it was like, yeah, all right, that's right.
But here we are.
Here we are.
Coronavirus.
Coronavirus.
And entering into, what are we doing now?
Month 15?
Yeah, something like that.
And everybody's got a quarantine on Wii.
And all of a sudden, the idea of a cat comes back up.
And interestingly, my kid is kind of ambivalent about it.
She's never had a pet.
She's not one of those kids who craves X animal to be in the house?
No.
What she wants is to have a whole...
group of much younger children between the ages of four and yeah, topping out at five younger children that do not yet have the voice to express their own will.
She wants a group of people she can manage.
She wants to manage a group of five much younger children.
That's what she, if she could have her druthers, we would have
four four-year-olds that she just got to dress up and tell what to do and a cat just seemed like i mean you know she goes to her aunt's house and there's seven cats in there and nobody can find them and so a cat just seemed like that makes sense her experience is that the cats of her life and she's also not at that age or hasn't had the opportunity to find internet cats
So the thing that will sometimes happen in our house, and I'm ashamed to say this, but sometimes when the cat's not in the room and we're looking at pictures of cats or videos of cats, and my wife and I are laying on the bed like Charlie Bucket's grandparents and looking at our phones, we go, aww, and then we'll say, very sotto voce, aww.
man, I really want a normal cat someday.
I want a regular cat, because we have a dirty cat.
It's not a murder cat, but we do have a dirty cat.
But you crave, you see, like, oh, look at this cat's normal.
Or, like, this cat is kitty-like.
And, like, you crave that, but your daughter has not had exposure to internet cats in a way that would normalize cat domesticity for her.
Yeah, she just, you know, like, I was raised with cats, and so...
The idea of a new cat, you're just kind of trying to slot the new cat in somewhere between your best cat, your favorite cat, and your worst cat.
You want the new cat to be somewhere in between your best and worst cat.
And maybe if you get lucky and it exceeds your best cat ever, I mean, you really get lucky there.
And that would be Lewis for you?
That would be Lewis.
Lewis was my last cat and my best cat.
And Lewis, in being my best cat, had to exceed the lofty heights achieved by both Guido, who was formerly my best cat...
And before that, Mel, who was one of the great cats.
That sounds like a high bar, John.
It was.
And that's not to say that the cats in the middle, like like Tippi and Flaky and Puppy and Puppy, too, weren't all great cats, too.
I mean, we never had a bad cat.
Oh, wait, there was Lucy.
Lucy was a bad cat.
Oh.
But Lucy went to live with Eric Corson and Lucy and Eric Corson are bonded, deeply bonded.
It was the wrong match for you.
Wrong match.
Lucy and I just – Lucy and my family, my entire family.
We just didn't have the same needs.
But Eric and Lucy, they are totally – Sometimes creatures vibrate on different wavelengths and I don't know what that means but I believe it to be true.
There are sometimes people – and this could be like a very Kurt Vonnegut, Bokanonism thing.
But there are some people that you instantly vibe with because there's some kind of vibration.
And I think sometimes you'll put up with a murder cat or a dirty cat for a long time out of, you know, noblesse oblige or, you know, some kind of some kind of honor to care for the creature.
But it's different when you meet somebody that you can really vibe with.
Yeah, I think the first time that Lucy met Eric, Lucy did what she did to everyone that she first met, which was viciously attack them.
And Eric thought, haha, that's amazing.
And then I said, and every time Eric came over to the house, he was like, where's my girl?
You know, where's Lucy?
And she would attack him and shred him.
And he was like, that's good.
That's fantastic.
You know, just like she just turned him to hamburger.
And so I was like, do you want to babysit Lucy?
And he was like, sure.
And then as soon as Lucy was with Eric, it was like.
It was it was like absolute heaven match.
He would walk into his house and it was like Inspector Clouseau.
He would look for Kato.
Kato.
Kato.
And then she would just like rip him.
And he's like, ha ha ha.
And they've been you know, she's still alive.
I mean, she's got to be 15 now.
Anyway, the other day.
I get read into a new dossier.
Oh, OK.
Which is the – we've been looking at cats online.
And I was like, oh.
Oh, I know how this goes.
Where they have secret meetings behind your back.
I don't get consulted about everything.
Oh, please.
I don't get consulted about anything.
Sometimes furniture shows up at the house.
It might be an animal.
Yeah.
There's some kind of a plan.
No, absolutely.
I don't get read into very much at all because I think they know that I'm a negative Nelly about a lot of stuff, abundance of caution.
But that does not stop them from having, I think, fairly extensive conversations behind the scenes about what the next plan is.
The plan is a thing I never – I didn't realize was a thing about domesticity.
Like having never been shacked up with anybody, I didn't – I never –
You know, people had to alert me to a plan because I had my own front door lock, you know.
But now I'm like standing in the kitchen at 115 in my socks drinking a cup of coffee and someone walks through the kitchen.
It could be either one of them and say, oh, at 2 o'clock you need to be at X because X, Y and Z. And I'm like, at 2 o'clock I need to be what?
Yeah.
Did I – has this – oh, no, no.
We've been working on this for weeks.
Oh, brother.
But I don't – I do – and it's just like – the person that alerted me to that is already just a whiff, just a ghost of perfume.
Oh, you're being – now you're being counter-revolutionary.
Get with the program.
Read the book.
Get with the program.
Anyway, so we – where was I?
I was somewhere.
There was a thing I had to do.
And these days that seems pretty unusual, right?
Pretty rare.
Yes.
But I had a thing.
I don't remember what it was.
It was a thing.
You know what happened?
Jason Finn, friend of the program.
Big fan.
His lady friend, Legenda, Legenda said – texted me and said, Jason hasn't done anything in the last five months and I think that he needs some companionship.
And I said, why are you looking at me?
And she was like, well, I don't know.
Do you know any other friends that he has?
And I was like...
no i guess not and she was like right so you need to come you talked about this how you got sort of assigned where he was assigned to you that now now uh jason's a project and and you guys are going to do some some some guy stuff and hang out a little bit get him out of the house get him in motion yeah so so he came over to my house but now i was going over to jason's
And Jason's very stylish townhouse in downtown Seattle, right on top of Capitol Hill.
It's got a lot of art, right?
Is that right?
Townhouse full of fantastic art.
It's very, very nicely done.
Jason has a wonderful eye.
It's a very chic place.
Mm-hmm.
And I was going to come over with our friend Tina, who is also an art collector.
Tina is an engineer who builds giant cranes.
And Tina worked on the crane, designed and built the crane that lifts the space shuttle onto its gas tank.
Shit, dawg.
Tina built the crane that opens Safeco Field's roof.
The – whatever.
Not the crane but like the machine.
Wow.
That's big doings.
She's one of these engineers that has like her – she's a member of the global marketplace or whatever.
Like she builds things and so she's like, I'm in Taipei this week because I'm building this giant –
i guess crane some giant machine you know you know i just did a podcast about how you can convince a guy to wear a cpap if you tell him it'll make him come so i'm not exactly sweating it i'm doing some pretty important work here too well sure sure me too you know i mean i don't think i'm sensitive about it but you know just because you make it you know they'll need a crane in uh in taipei take the house they built for her apart
Well, she – so she used to – back in the day, she used to say to me like, why don't you come down to Florida with me?
They're launching another space shuttle and I'm going to be there with the hard hat on, like standing in front of some yellow button.
And I was like, yeah, maybe next time.
This time I've got a – I'm like playing a show at –
ye old cranky coffee shop for 15 people or something never went never went down with my friend tina and watched a space shuttle because just like seeing nirvana i figured out yeah it would you know i could do it next week that's me and who screwed you meanwhile you're at home like sorting through your ticket stubs and it's like that's gone
Never saw Husker do you.
Oh, I just arrived.
I arrived a little bit, a little bit too late and just never had the opportunity.
And then in 1987, suddenly they're not together anymore.
Yeah.
It was me with Nirvana.
They, I walked out in, I, you know, I walked past a couple of venues where they were playing inside and they're from Seattle.
They're from Seattle or not from Seattle, but they played in Seattle a lot.
I don't know if you know that.
Yeah.
They're famous for having been from Everett.
No, Aberdeen, Aberdeen.
Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Aberdeen, as we say.
Anyway, I was at dinner at Jason's house.
Tina was there.
Also, Tina has a fantastic art collection, even better than Jason's.
Legenda was there and Jason was making me some sous vide filet mignons.
That's a good way to do it.
It was really nice.
It was really nice.
We had a nice time.
And then I got home.
And I brought Jason some, so I'm going to reveal a little something here.
Okay.
You know, my daughter's really into Star Wars.
I don't know how it happened.
I fought it every step of the way.
I was like, I don't think you want to be into Star Wars.
Look, I know a lot of people that are into Star Wars.
I don't think that's what you want from life.
And she, I don't know who her influences were.
I think it was just, I think it was just Star Wars.
It's in the air, man.
It's in the air.
It's in the air.
She got into it.
She read all the books.
She loves Dark Vader, right?
Not anymore.
I mean she's really into – I mean it's just not like she doesn't love him.
But she's watched all the Clone Wars.
So she knows everything about – That's a good Anakin.
That's a very good Anakin.
That's a good Anakin.
She does, you know, and I've got my little Clone Wars era Obi-Wan imitation that I do.
Anakin.
Oh, that's pretty good.
I do one based on the movie that came after that.
Always on the move.
That's nice.
I like that.
But you also get some nice Aayla Secura.
She's a lot of fun.
I've got a bad feeling about this.
Thank you.
But it's in the air.
She's got it.
And you're bringing something to Jason's dinner with the crane woman.
Well, yeah.
So what I started to do was I realized, you know, she's playing with like Lego people.
She's playing with Barbie dolls.
And I was like, there's a whole world of Star Wars figurines out there.
And so I started going online and I realized that you can buy
So all – when Clone Wars came out – no, no, no, not when Clone Wars.
When Phantom Menace came out, all of a sudden the Kenner people, the toy people realized, wow, there haven't been any Star Wars figurines in 15 years.
People are ripe for this.
And so they put out all these Star Wars figurines, every bit character, every minor nobody in the background –
Like Padme has got – there's like 15 Padmes because every time she changes her clothes.
Oh, I know.
There was a local toy store that – I hate to say it just closed recently that was our toy store that we would go to.
And it was such – I don't know if I ever sent you these.
But they had Phantom Menace figures on sale that they hadn't sold in 1999.
And they still had them.
They had a Jar Jar Binks and they had – I believe they had an Amidala made up with her cookie makeup.
Where it might have been Keira Knightley, but I'm not sure.
But they had those in the store until the place closed a couple months ago.
Well, I have them all.
Whoa!
What size?
The big ones?
No, they're the... Like the 4-inch?
4-inch-ish ones?
Yeah, like the ones that we had in 1978.
Oh, hell yeah.
The little ones.
Because I went online and I was like, I just Googled like Star Wars figurines lot.
And all these things popped up where somebody had...
50 of them and was like, I got 50 of these, one of everybody.
And so I'm in competition with who, what, uh, I mean, clearly 15 other neckbeards from around the world and we're bidding against these things.
And you know, I'm willing to pay a hundred bucks for 50, uh,
like Amidala's.
Rusty Brown really wants to complete his collection with that tiny Anakin.
He's like, he's like, God, you know, only one I wanted, I wanted the, like the muscly, uh, Leia or whatever.
So, so they start showing up here in these giant bags and I'm like, well, I can't just give her 50 star Wars figures.
So I took, you know, I took,
Kwai Jon, and I hit him in a bookshelf.
He has a very specific set of skills.
He does.
The thing is, he's going to train Anakin even though the boy's too old.
Because of the midichlorians and whatnot.
He's got more than anybody.
Off the charts.
So my daughter really...
really notices things.
And I, I talked to this Anakin in a hiding place and she saw it within an hour and was like, what is this?
And she had no idea that they existed.
Oh my God.
You know, and all of a sudden she's got a four inch tall, um, quite John.
And she's like, what is this magic?
And I didn't cop to it.
I was like, where did that come from?
And then every day I've been putting out another little person.
Wow.
And because I've got this.
Oh, so the thing was, once I bought 50 of these, then I was like, I'm on eBay.
And I bought 50 more of them.
And then I got like a Millennium Falcon and an X-Wing fighter and all these things.
Dude, that's so cool.
All of them from back in the day.
And I've been putting just one out a day.
And sometimes I'll go – because I'll put out these nerds from the Jedi Council that I couldn't identify.
If somebody had a gun to my head, it's like, I don't know.
It's the pointy-headed guy or the guy with a lobster for a face.
They're at the meeting where democracy died.
Yeah, that's right.
But she knows them all.
She knows them.
She knows them.
She knows the planet they're from.
She knows the race they are.
No kidding?
because she's read all the books 50 times oh my god but when i would put out a couple of these people you know you could just see that she was getting a little bit blase about it and i'm like hey don't get blase maybe they'll stop maybe there'll never be another one never know and so a few few days go by and you know nothing happens and so it's become a part of her life that
She's not really searching for them, but as she walks around, like every once in a while, there'll be a little dude or a little gal poking – or a little monster poking their head out of somewhere.
Well, you know, that's been really fun.
But the thing is when you buy a bunch of Star Wars lots, here's what you get.
Hmm.
Every one of them has got a Kwai John and a Jar Jar and a Lando Calrissian or something.
You know, there's a lot of duplication.
And so I've got a bunch of cool ones, but I've also got like four Kwai Johns.
And I've got four Mace Vindalus or whatever.
Yeah.
That's a delicious Indian treat.
It is.
It's very spicy.
God, he loves amputating people.
He does.
So, so when I went over to Jason's house, I brought him a little, uh, a little, you know, I had a little bag of them that I'd recently got.
And some of them, you know, some of them I care less about.
And Jason was like, you know, that I love that little mace vindaloo.
And I was like, it's yours.
And he was like super, he was,
like really surprisingly like chuffed about it.
He was so proud of it and like set him up on the table and kept looking at it.
That's so cool.
He was really, really into him.
But while I was at this dinner party, having some star Wars times with my friends, a cat, I'm sorry, not a cat, a kitten, a little kid was acquired out in the world.
What?
And brought into the home.
a tiny kitten was, there was this plan afoot and apparently they'd been looking at kittens online and had been bidding on them and people are like, ah, that one's already sold and all this stuff.
And they found this little, this little kitten and they went and got it and brought it home.
And so all of a sudden I'm sitting here having my sous vide filet mignon and I get a text, which is a picture of a tiny kitten and, um, you know, all these little heart emojis and,
And so I came home to now a kitten.
I'm sharing a house with a kitten.
The kitten's name is Alieska.
Alieska.
And the kitten is a kitten.
Like she wants to stay up all night.
She wants to attack everything.
She wants to – but she also wants to cuddle all afternoon.
She wants to be fed –
And she wants to poop in a box like she wants to do all the things that they want to do.
That's a regular cat.
You got a cat.
It's a regular cat.
But the thing is, and are you still there?
Yeah, of course.
Oh, the sound changed a little bit.
Oh, sorry.
No, I'm here.
My little girl all of a sudden very in love with this cat.
Oh, God.
But here's the thing.
You never had a chance.
I never had a chance.
But what's hilarious is that they still do the thing where I'm standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee in my socks and they say, oh, at 2 o'clock we're going to –
go X. And I'm like, you guys are going to go X what?
And they're like, well, well, you know, sorry, can't talk now.
We only wake you for the important meetings.
And then, so I'm there with my half a cup of coffee and they're gone.
And it's, and then I look over and there's Ali Esca going.
And I'm like, I guess it's just you and me kid.
And this past weekend they went camping.
The two of them, they were like girls only.
Yeah.
And so then it's me and Alyeska just living in the house together.
You think that's part of the plan?
Was it part of the plan to strand you with the cat so that you would bond?
Well, I don't got no problem bonding with a cat.
It's like, there you are.
And the cat's like, meow.
And I'm like, yep, that's all that.
You know, you have exceeded expectations.
Yeah.
But when you're living with Alyeska all by yourself, as I was this past weekend, there's the thing about a cat.
And you know this.
Mm-hmm.
A cat wants to sleep on your face.
A cat wants to fuck with your face in the night.
Yeah.
And I can't have something fucking with my face in the night.
I just can't.
It's against – Second to your feet in the morning, face at night.
Just leave it alone.
Leave it.
Don't mess with my feet in the night and don't mess with my face in the morning.
It's just basic common courtesy.
And so I'm like, look, we got to have an agreement, you and me.
Don't mess with my face in the night.
And the cat is like, nope, no problem.
Do you mind if I play with your keys under the bed while you're trying to sleep?
And I'm like, I mind that too.
How did you even get my keys?
You know, like stop it, knock it off.
And so, I don't know, Ali Esk and I have been, we've been developing a relationship.
And what I'm realizing is that everybody else in the house, it's just like when the baby was born.
Everybody else is enjoying the cuteness of the baby.
But when it's time to say, well, you know, the baby can't just...
like run our lives, the baby can't dictate to us, you know, more, more than it's going to.
Right.
Like in the, because in the sense of the cat, like I came in day three and they were feeding the cat, um, you know, a can of wet whiskers or whatever.
And then there was a little bowl of kibble over to the side.
And I said, okay, uh, uh,
I'm sorry to intervene here.
I know that I don't have any say in any of these matters.
But here's what happens if you feed a cat wet food.
The cat's never going to eat the dry food.
Pretty soon you're going to be in a – the cat's going to be a tyrant.
If you start feeding the cat wet food, the cat likes wet food and you go, yay, OK.
I really nailed it.
I got it a treat.
And then guess what?
Now you bought all that one.
Let's say you get some eye and love and you wascally wabbit because the cat likes wabbit.
And then you feed the cat that.
And then guess what?
Now you're back to a Morris the Cat type situation.
Week later, the cat's not interested.
Meow, meow, meow, meow.
And like that bar just goes up and up and up.
Also, it makes some shit weird.
And so eventually you're going to have a cat that only eats lasagna.
Yeah.
This is not a thing that you want.
You need the – here's what you do.
You put dry food out.
Cat boundaries, John.
The cat is going to scream bloody murder because you fed it – because it lived three days where you were feeding it fucking labor canoodle.
And now it's like –
How did I end up with this wet food or this dry food?
But the thing is, a cat has got a walnut brain.
And by that afternoon, it's going to.
You're the asshole.
But the cat's going to go like, all right, I guess dry food is what I got.
And they're going to eat it.
And then life returns to normal.
You can give it a little bit of wet food.
That's fine.
But don't get into a situation where the cat is running your life.
You've got to mix it up.
Well, this is the thing.
This is one reason I'm up early is because the cat meows 13 times every time she meows.
And that's her signal saying to my wife, please go give me the wascally wabbit that I don't really like anymore.
And then you put it down or you put down some greenies and the cat goes, hmm, takes a bite and then runs away and goes lay in the sun.
I guess that's her job.
Yeah.
You're right though.
You're creating – not you but your beloved family is creating an unreasonable expectation that's going to be hard to sustain and it's not good for anybody.
That's just my opinion.
It's my opinion too.
My dad would feed his cat – my dad's cats and I'm talking about – now I'm talking about puppy too.
My dad would feed puppy too some wet food in the morning.
The cat would eat half of it and then would snub it in the afternoon and insist on having fresh, wet cat food.
Oh, boy.
So that my dad was throwing away half a can of cat food a day because it wasn't fresh enough for the cat.
And I was like, look, I can't do this.
I cannot live in this world, you know?
Um, so anyway, but the thing is like, I'm the bad guy again.
I'm the one that, you know, that doesn't let their kid throw a tantrum in the mall.
And I'm the one that doesn't feed the cat, uh, $15.
You're the, you're the bad one.
That's where you are now.
You got to, you're the bad one.
But you know, I can do that.
They cuddle it.
And then I'm the one that's like, you can't sleep on my face.
Mm hmm.
So last night my kid comes in to my room and she's like, I can't have the cat in my room.
It's under my bed.
It's playing with your keys.
I can't sleep.
She's like, can't the cat sleep in here?
And I'm like, the cat can't sleep in here because I don't want it to sit on my face in the middle of the night.
And we both looked at each other and we were like, mama's room.
And we ran down and we pitched the cat in the room and we closed the door behind it.
You just kind of like just whipped it in there and closed the door.
And this is the thing about hippie mom who everything is fine.
She woke up this morning and I was like, did cat sleep with you last night?
And she was like, yeah, she did.
It was really great.
She cuddled with me all night.
You're kidding.
Mischief managed.
Wow.
And I said, I said, did the cat jump on your face?
And she said, yes.
The cat woke me up in the middle of the night by pouncing on my face.
And I was like, huh?
And that was fine?
And she was like, oh, it's so cute.
And then another time she woke me up by literally punching me in the face with her paw while I slept.
Wow.
And I was like, and now it's fine with you?
And she was like, really, really cute.
Super cute.
Wow.
She's your Eric Corson in this situation.
We have completely different thresholds.
She is living in a neighboring France.
Yeah.
And, you know, like, God bless them.
I'm glad they found each other.
Mm-hmm.
I guess it's a blessing that we're not asked to participate in the family.
Right.
It's, it's, it's, it's an, it's an understandable job.
You and I have an understandable job, which is like, there's a family.
We are,
We're adjacent to it or members of it.
I mean, every France needs a karma suck.
You need somebody there who's going to be standing there saying, no way are we doing that.
And then they just ignore you and move on.
It's a lot like, you know, the Vichy or something.
That's right.
We'll be alerted when we're required.
You'll be receiving your assignments on the day and date.
Don't plan too far ahead.
Why would I put that on the calendar?
But here's where you're going at, too.
Hakuna Matata.
It's gotten so that I'm kind of scared to stand in the kitchen with my socks drinking a cup of coffee because I'm like, when's the other shoe going to drop?
Congratulations.