This week, Merlin and John talk about:

• Merlin's wife painting their bedroom (Merlin Mann)
• Merlin feeling less bad (Merlin Mann)
• The first voice in the morning (Depression)
• The Eagles (Music)
• John painting the back porch (House)
• John painting his dad’s wall sunshine yellow (Stories)
• The Internet of Things at John’s potential new house (Mid-century modern)
• 1980s Intercom systems (Technology)
• Fan Death (Conspiracy)
• John got an Apple Watch
• John taking Twitter off his phone again (Internet and Social Media)
• John’s neighbor’s dogs are gone (House)
• John sold his GMC RV (GMC RV)
• Dreaming of buying a new house (Mid-century modern)

The problem: John doesn’t need to talk to his toaster, referring to the Internet of things that John maybe wants to install in his potential new house.

The show title refers to the name of the color Merlin’s wife painted their bedroom with. Merlin would describe it as light blue.

During the show Merlin asked for a 10 minute break because he thought there was a delivery attempt, but it was not. He has various means to monitor those.

They start the show singing each other’s names. Merlin sings O-o-h Child by Five Stairsteps and they agree that it is a good song. Merlin powered through this weekend and has a lot going on.

Merlin is not entirely sure that the abundance of information we receive in our lives is always wholesome, especially the Internet of Things things that have a bad signal and noise ratio.

Draft version
The segments below are drafts that will be incorporated into the rest of the Wiki as time permits.

The first voice in the morning (RL310)

No matter how good or bad John feels, the first voice he hears speak to him in the morning from inside the house is ”You are a loser!” or ”There is so much to do today! I’m never going to get it all done.” The number one reason why he would like a personal assistant or a butler would be that someone would come in in the morning, open the blinds and say ”Good morning Mr. Rodrick [sic]!” (without the ”e”, in a British voice) It would be the opposite of Memento Mori, where the guy would whisper to the king ”You are mortal!” Merlin and John wished they had somebody who whispered to them ”You are going to be fine!”

The last voice John heard yesterday was at about 3:30am: ”It is 3:30am and you have to get up at 7:30am!” so when he got up at 7:30am the first voice said ”See! You went to bed at 3:30am and now how do you feel?”, meaning that the first voice was already lecturing him about the day. He rolled out of bed, tumbled to the kitchen, poured himself a cup of ambition, yawned and stretched and tried to come to life (lyrics from Nine To Five by Dolly Parton), jumped in (out of) a cab like a stuntman dummy, little did he know he was still doing twenty, nearly broke his neck but he thought it was funny, because he made it uptown and didn’t spend any money. (lyrics from You Ain’t Fresh by Boogie Boys) Merlin thought this was a Will Smith rap, but having depressing Will Smith raps in your head would be so catchy and you would be so fucked. Merlin had Running on Empty (by Jackson Browne) in his head for a few days and that is a good song to have in your head.

The Eagles (RL310)

The other day John was in a restaurant and they had some kind of playlist where he heard four Eagles songs during the course of a meal. What kind of Spotify could you put on that would have four Eagles songs in the course of a normal meal? If that was Smooth Sounds of the 1970s, you would have had 700 songs to chose from. Merlin likes the Eagles although it is not popular to like them, but four songs during a normal meal is too much Eagles for a pseudo-random situation. Those songs were not any deep cuts and the question is if there even are any deep cuts because there were so many singles.

Lyin’ Eyes, Best of my Love, I can’t tell you Why were all big songs. They look up ”Eagles Deep Cuts” and came up with this page that mentions Train Leaves Here This Morning, Out of Control, The Last Resort, Good Day in Hell, Journey of the Sorcerer, and The Disco Strangler, which is from the album The Long Run that is described as slick mishmash of funk, glam pop and club-tailored Robo-Rock. Merlin makes a DJ Radio Voice which sounds the same as being really angry, they have talked about this before. Merlin’s radio voice sounds like Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler from the movie Predator. His lifestyle is his death style.

John painting his dad’s wall sunshine yellow (RL310)

One time back when John was in his ”drug years”, he and a friend were in John’s dad’s apartment down at the ski resort. It was a railroad style or shotgun style apartment with one wall going the entire length of the apartment all the way from the front door to the back door and all the rooms went off from this one hall, a continuous uninterrupted wall without a door. Maybe they were doing drugs, but John suggested to paint that wall yellow. They moved everything, they taped it, because John is very meticulous, and over the course of this weekend they painted it sunshine yellow, let it dry and pulled all the tape off and it looked like a professional job with the exception that it was sunshine yellow which no professional painter would have chosen.

At the end of the weekend, they woke up or shook off their fog, they had put all the paintings back on the wall, it looked amazing. John’s dad came home, walked into his house and there was a sunshine yellow wall that was 150 feet (45 m) long that was the main wall of the house and he lived with it for 5 or 6 years. John was really proud of it every time he walked in. His dad might not even have remarked upon it, but he was never mad about it. One day John showed up and the wall was painted back to normal white and again, no remark was made. It was one of those transactions that happened between John and his dad between 1987 and 1992, which was a 5-year period where they were living in the sunshine.

1980s Intercom systems (RL310)

Merlin starts talking about Intercoms, like they recently mentioned on ATP (Episode 295). John’s mom had an Intercom like that in her house in the 1980s with a master control panel in the kitchen and an AM/FM Radio. She loved it! It seemed pretty swanky for the time, but you realized quickly that you could simply shout after your mom without using it. She also had central vacuum where she would put the hose in the little slot. In the late 1990s / early 2000s you got houses wired with Ethernet. When John and his mom rebuilt her house they wired it with Ethernet and HiFi-wire so you could put a HiFi-stereo somewhere and run the speakers to different rooms. It was pretty hot!

Fan Death (RL310)

They talk about the Fan Death superstition in Korea where all fans sold have timers on them. It would be even cooler if it would cause death remotely, like Spooky Action at a distance. John was going to put this in The Omnibus!. John could get an Internet of Things switch to turn the fan off. Merlin reads about Culture-Bound Syndrome and they mention some examples.

John taking Twitter off his phone again (RL310)

Last night John took Twitter off his phone again because somehow he sank back into it and every time he turns on Twitter it made him sad. For a while he used it as a broadcast-only medium and he went on there to say some funny things, but not very often. If people want to contact him it is easy to tweet things at him. His favorite phenomenon is people making a comment about a thing that happened 9 months ago, but without any preface, like ”That doesn’t make any sense!” - ”What?”

For a while John was just reading those things, having a good time on the Internet, but then he started to read Twitter again and it turned into a freaking head nightmare so he turned it off and he will instead go on the computer at the end of the day if he wants to read anybody’s messages, but he does not ever want to sit for 5 minutes while he is waiting in a parking lot for somebody and look at Twitter, because it does not help and it makes things worse, not better.

John doesn’t have Facebook on his phone, which means Instagram is the only thing he has, but Instagram is Facebook! It is like when Blogger turned into Google and Flickr turned into Yahoo! John wondered what Instagram gives him. He likes to look at what is going on in Busy Philipps’ life who lives a very dynamic life and John is very happy for her. What John is concerned about is: Does he really have fun over there or does it just feel like fun because he has lost a good sense of what actual fun is? John didn’t take Instagram off, because he cannot interact with it on his watch or on his computer at home because Instagram is specifically a mobile app and they are pot-committed to John having it on his phone.