2025.07.09: Life As A Barn Cat

It is not about the nail.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Gun up!

Good!

Morning to you, wherever you are, because it is!

For July 9th, 2025, my name is Bernie Burns, sitting right there.

She always makes it about the nail.

It's Ashley Burns.

Say hi to Ashley, everybody.

It's all about the nail.

All about the nail.

Okay.

I love that sketch.

I love that sketch, but I can understand why people wouldn't like that sketch.

It's to me, you can watch the nail in the head sketch if you've also watched the man cold sketch.

You have to watch those both.

You can't watch one or the other.

It's imbalanced if you watch that.

Okay, well, then here's what we will do: we will put a link to both of the sketches in order in the link dump so people can watch them as they must, okay, as they should.

Actually, I got to say, I think my voice has kind of made a slight but permanent change.

I feel like it has over the course of the last three weeks.

Maybe it's because I've changed, radically changed, climate like four times now in the last two weeks.

To myself, I just sound a little bit different.

Maybe, maybe it'll be different.

Maybe the uh, maybe the acoustics in your head have changed.

You know, how you get, uh, you can build up pressure or whatever, and then I don't know, maybe your earbones, maybe the density in your earbones has shifted a little bit.

You know, I watched, we were talking about ASMR yesterday.

I watched some chiropractic video sometimes.

Occasionally, there will be someone who does a little bit where they adjust the bones in your skull.

And even I'm like, come on, dude, that's not, you're not doing that.

You're not adjusting the plates in someone head, someone's head.

That's not happening.

I saw a fascinating video of some people were, I think, hiking.

They had made a extreme change.

in

altitude and someone had this headache and they couldn't get rid of this headache.

And someone came over and basically pulled on their scalp and repressurized their skull.

And I thought, that can't be real.

Like, that can't be real.

But it looked pretty real.

It also made a gigantic noise when the person did it.

Like, essentially, they grabbed a big lock of their hair at the top of their head in the back, wrapped their finger around it, and then yanked.

And you could see their scalp come up.

And it made a pop.

Like, you could hear it.

It's like this is a very good thing.

They did a very loud pop.

I thought it was, um at first i thought that they had like popped um you know their neck or something like that but no it was apparently repressurizing their head and that fixed everything i'll see if i can find the video to put in the link dump because it's weird i've never i've never thought that you could just like pull someone's hair and repressurize their head but apparently that's a thing that can be done so it's yeah people are fascinating we'll say that

It kind of goes without saying, too, you should never ever do this at home or do it on anyone else at home.

I've also seen lately where they can pop people's ears, like you can, like pull on your ear because it's like a giant cartilage bit, right?

And so, right, there's some kind of connective tissue, and they can pop that.

And I see them doing that occasionally as well.

Maybe you can do that to yourself and reset how your voice sounds to you.

Oh, maybe I can do that.

I can, I can readjust the acoustics of my head.

Do you, do you think anytime like Superman is flying around in the sky, he has to occasionally just like tug on his hair a little bit?

And that's why it's artfully tussled in order to reset his internal, I don't know, brain pressure.

Are you going to see that this week?

I was worried actually before you got to the Superman thing, I was going to say that I might have lost one of the three bones in my ear and now I'm going to lose my status as a mammal.

I'm going to have to

get recertified.

Just look around the house.

Look around the house.

If you've lost that bone, see if you can find it.

It's very important, okay?

I don't think I can date a non-mammal.

It'd be like

when an Olympian takes an endorsement or some money and then they lose that amateur status and they're done forever.

I'll just have to

accept my fate.

But yeah, I've got to say, so are you reading the Superman stuff?

Because I'm going to go see it with the older kids here in town because they're both here in Austin right now.

That's not always the case, but it is right now.

So we're going to go see it.

Yeah, I'm planning on seeing it.

So, I mean, the reviews are out finally.

So

we're finally past this so-and-so broken embargo and so-and-so broken embargo.

And it's very titillating.

We're past past that phase.

Now the actual reviews are out.

And so we don't have to rely on the crazy headlines that were breaking the embargoes early on.

What was the Daily Beast one?

Was the big one?

It was the terrible new Superman movie is the final nail in the grave for the superhero genre.

That was the headline for their

embargo breaking Superman review and got everyone all in a tizzy.

And that's only one of the ones that broke embargo.

There were a bunch of other ones.

So now finally the official reviews are out and they seem pretty, pretty good.

I mean, they don't seem like they're as glowing as most of James Gunn's work with the superhero genre, but pretty good.

They say it's watchable.

It's fun.

Sometimes

it's maybe overstuffed.

It's trying to do too much.

And so

some of the bits don't hit as hard as they can.

or

sometimes that it's there are a lot of silly elements to it very like kind of silly,

light comic booky elements.

And as a result, some of the other moments, the more serious things, don't hit quite as hard as they could.

But that overall, it's fun.

I have to admit that when I've watched the trailers for it, I'm not really into the whole dog stuff.

Then again, I'm not a dog person,

but I'm happy that other people like that the dog is in the movie.

I'm glad also to hear you say that you're reading really positive reviews, even though the Daily Beast one was oddly scathing.

Because I've been looking at it, and honestly, I see a lot of stuff on like people I know who go to premieres for like social media, and they do have to walk the line of not saying anything that would reveal anything or breaking an embargo.

But at the same time, I feel like everything that I'm reading is eh, too lukewarm.

Like, I haven't read anything particularly glowing just yet.

Right.

Well, let me read you.

This is an excerpt from the Variety Review.

It says, the super busy quality of Superman works for it and at times against it.

The movie rarely slows down long enough to allow its characters to meditate on their shifting realities.

That's one reason it falls short of the top-tier superhero cinema like the Dark Knights, Superman 2, The Batman, Guardians.

I'd characterize the film as next level good, a roster that includes Iron Man, Thor, Batman Begins, Captain America, and the hugely underrated Iron Man 3, which I imagine is a polarizing entry there.

Yet watching Superman, we register the layered quality of the conflicts and we're drawn right inside them.

Gunn constructs an intricate game game of a superhero saga that's arresting and touching and occasionally exhausting in equal measure.

Also, I have to say, I've heard that

our girl, Rachel Brosnahan, who we absolutely love from Ms.

Maisel, is a standout in this, which I figured she would be because she seems like the perfect Lois.

You know, you and I felt like that was absolutely perfect casting the moment we saw it.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That's that's inspired.

It's, I mean, it's incredible.

She's great.

Yeah, it's to me, it's like along the lines of somebody.

It's, you know, when you do a fan cast, you're like, well, of course, that person would be perfect.

Like Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier.

Everyone, everyone wanted that for decades, and we finally got it.

And it paid off.

It was fantastic.

But yes, sometimes you get like just, there's just, there's one person who encapsulates that perfectly.

So two things.

When you were saying this, before you even read that review, I was going to make the comment, not having seen this, but it just appears to me.

from like very high-level view, someone who doesn't really have a lot of investment in DC movies, it does feel like if they had tried to start the MCU with Captain America and not with Iron Man, because I feel like maybe if you're going to start with, you know, a whole new DC universe, maybe Batman might be the best person to start with there because it's kind of a slam dunk.

People love Batman.

That's true.

I mean, look, we've had, we've had decades and decades and generations of Batman.

And, you know, even the really silly ones that everyone likes to make fun of, those did well enough for their time, right?

Yeah.

Like even those ones.

It was fifth and sixth iterations in some cases.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's, we're going to kind of see that too, because you could argue now that,

you know, Marvel is rebooting the MCU and they're starting with Fantastic Four in just a couple of weeks.

That's an interesting entry to start something off with.

And I just read, Ashley, that there's going to be the largest ever gap, at least since COVID.

between Marvel movies that's coming up.

It's going to be Fantastic Four and then over a year later is going to be the the new Spider-Man movie.

Oh, God, really?

I guess I didn't, that didn't register with me.

I didn't realize that we're going to have that big of a gap, which is not to say that that's a bad thing either.

You know, years when they were originally setting up the first phase of the MCU years ago, it was not nearly as frequent as we have Marvel movies now.

So maybe the slowdown is exactly what MCU needs.

Yeah, well, you know, and also, does it though?

Because we just came through this

phase five, which honestly, in hindsight, kind of feels like an intermission.

It doesn't seem like anything of note came out of phase five.

And I know they had some real-world problems they had to navigate, but it just seems like it was a giant nothing burger of about $2 billion worth of movies.

Well, maybe that's why the slowdown is needed, though.

Like, instead of trying to do all these things and see what sticks, they can just take a beat and really put something solid together.

Like make a plan, you know, that this was, I feel like this,

they've been so shotgun approach.

We'll do this and we'll do this and we'll do this and we'll expand on this.

And

everyone is very, very tired.

And so if they pull it back and take a very focused, you know, more slow, more deliberate approach, maybe that's exactly what it needs.

Also, while we're talking about the dog and not being a dog, but being a cat person as well, we get a lot of feedback about Mush being outside of our house.

I think we've talked about this before.

We don't live in like a suburban neighborhood, we don't live in the middle of a city.

Like where we live, Mush is now a barn cat, and he's, if I'm being honest, actually, he's not a great barn cat, but we have, like, he has a job to do, he has rodent control that he's in charge of.

So, he does.

And I look, I feel like you're casting aspersions here saying he's not good at it.

He's pretty good at catching mice and things like that.

The problem that we have is that he brings his work home with him.

And uh and and so then we have then we end up on cleanup duty right he's done the job he's even left us proof that he's doing his job right like like leaving you know it's like leaving something uh open on your screen where your boss can see it so they know that you're working hard right it's like that except it's all like wobbly bits which is sort of the gross version of that Yeah, or like when you sit down to work on the computer and the person who shares it with you has left every window open and unsaved.

It's like, that's like finding the mauled carcass of their creativity on your doorstep, essentially.

Are you referring to someone in particular, Bernie?

I'm not referring to anyone in particular at all, Ashley.

It's not about the nail.

Well, look, the next time, Bernie, the next time you sit down at the computer and see what I've left open, you're probably going to see an eBay listing, Bernie, for a certain festival.

that we've had great interest in over the years, and that's Fire Festival.

The guy who runs it, Billy, whatever his name is.

His name is Billy on the Lamb.

He said that he had this seven-figure deal lined up.

Someone was going to buy the Fire Festival IP and everything from him for like seven figures, which means $10 million or more.

That deal fell through.

So now there's a listing.

for Fire Festival on eBay.

And I don't know yet how much I believe this is legitimate.

It is, you know, it's posted by a user called Fire Festival, but who is really eBaying the Fire Festival IP legitimately?

Regardless of how real it is, I'm absolutely going to be following this because right now, and we are recording significantly earlier than usual due to time zone concerns, but right now it is going for $50,000.

Also, I should point out that seven figures is below 10 million.

That's single-digit millions is seven figures.

And I also wouldn't trust this guy.

I'm not correcting you, Ashley.

I'm just making sure I'm setting everyone who's like our math experts out there who are starting to cringe.

I'm setting them free.

Oh, yeah.

No, I'm doing the counting and you're correct.

Thanks for the man splain.

Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're welcome.

You're welcome.

It's not about the nail, actually.

But

I wouldn't trust it anyway, because if this guy is saying seven figures, there's no chance he's not counting the decimal places in the sense as well, right?

He's probably got like $10,000 on the table, and that's all he's got available out there.

So I wouldn't trust that guy at all.

Also, it's funny, you know, and it's like some people even suggested doing a crowdfund to buy it.

At that point, you're just giving this guy money, right?

Yeah, I mean, you know, it is, it's one thing to be like funny and be like, hey, well, sure, whatever.

We're going to buy Fire Festival for $50,000, whatever it is.

And it is, it is funny, yes.

But also,

yeah, who wants to give this guy any more money, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, can I tell another mush story while we're talking about giving away money?

Sure.

The reason why I said, I don't want everyone to think that I'm like, I'm just, I'm attacking my employee, Mush the Cat, and his performance, even though it is, I believe, subpar.

And I have a reason to say that.

I recently bought a new lawnmower in Scotland.

I got a Makita lawnmower, an electric lawnmower, and it runs off my 18-volt Makita batteries.

Yeah, I know this because you were very excited about that fact.

Well, I was so excited because they were running like a spring promotion where it's a tiny little lawnmower.

It's not big, but it's perfect for like doing, there's like a like a little space, you know, you want to get in there or you don't want to get it.

Like we have like a full-on riding mower as well and a tractor and everything else, but this is like perfect for like little things to do.

I actually used to have one of those and you used to heard me curse it all the time.

One of those like 1950s style reel mowers, which is, you push it and it's got like spinning blades on it.

A completely non-electric, non-motorized manual mower.

This is going to replace that.

But Makita was running a promotion where they were giving you, if you bought a qualifying product, actually, you would get a free 18-volt battery.

But then I also found a listing for one of these that it had a promotion in the store where it came with a battery and didn't have to send away for it.

So I thought, I'm going to try to double dip here and see if I can do that.

So I bought the mower, which was like $150.

The battery's worth about $65.

It came with a battery.

So I was like, yeah.

Then I sent away.

and I got the second battery.

So I got like a mower for like a brand new Makita mower for like 20 bucks.

I was walking around the house like a champion, tooting my own horn for like a week on that one.

You were very excited about the batteries.

I don't, have you even touched the mower itself yet?

Or did you basically just buy two batteries and it's like throwing a lawn mower for free?

Well, here's the thing.

The barn in which that mower goes into

the bag that goes on the back of the mower that catches the grass clippings.

Day two, a fucking mouse chewed through it.

And I've got this gigantic hole now in the side of the mower bag.

So Mush and I had a little talk.

We're going to have a performance review where we discuss this in depth.

He's going to have to build a plan for going forward for how he's going to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future.

Well, it sounds to me, Bernie, like what you, like what you really want from him is actually for him to spend more time outside.

He's a barn cat.

That's what's his job.

That's his jurisdiction, you know?

It's like work on your department, Mush.

Come on.

What do you need?

Bernie, maybe this, you being so hard on him is why he's running away to the highway to hitchhike his way to this the big city or something and see what the city has to offer maybe he uh saw that the superman reviews were coming out he was just really excited to check all that out and he just really needed to get away from the pressure for a little while he better not have been on the clock when he did all that stuff you know he had to log his mouth

it's like it was like i looked on the i looked on the app that we have that tracks him it was like three miles away what kind of cat goes three miles.

It was insane.

And I could tell you picked him up in the car because he made the three mile trip home in like two and a half minutes.

I don't think the cat turned to a cheetah all of a sudden and started running back down the road.

But yeah, so this, it doesn't really matter too much because this, I'm not going to catch the grass clippings anyway.

What am I an asshole, Ashley?

I'm just going to use the mulching feature anyway.

But it was after all this victory of this thing, the fucking mouse hitched a goddamn bag.

So what are you going to do?

Look, look at look at it this way, Bernie.

This way, the grass is going to be self-composting, right?

It's self-mulching.

Yeah, you know, you can put a cap in the back of it.

And basically, it says it's the mulching feature.

It basically just keeps the grass in the blade and just chops it up a little bit more, and that's it.

And then you're just like, Yeah, I'm not, I'm not ignoring raking the grass, Ashley.

I'm mulching the lawn.

That's what I'm doing.

Yeah,

there's some definitely some like suburban dad that came up with that feature for mowers.

It's like, yeah,

we're like feeding it back into the grass.

We're doing nice things.

And then he pulled up his socks and put on a hat.

That's exactly right.

That's saying, get out the edger, which also came with a free battery.

So now I'm up to you.

Ashley, I have a wealth of batteries, a wealth.

I had five.

Now I've got seven batteries, which also is important because I rewired Finn's like ride-on little John Deere tractor.

He's got one of those little, like, what do they call it, power wheels.

It's a 12-volt motor, but I rewired it so it would take my Makita batteries instead of the proprietary one.

And now when he puts the gas pedal down, he does like a full wheelie across the lawn because it's way overpowered.

Well, what you need to do, Bernie, is for that, for that, his little tractor, make sure you get some sort of like basket or net on the back and just have him collect all of the grass mulch from your mower, right?

Give him a job.

Okay, that's yeah, I'm glad you said that because as a guy, my go-to plan was to teach him how to eat mice.

And I'm thinking, then we can get rid of mush.

We can downsize.

We don't have to chase mush out at the freeway at two in the morning.

My kid eats mice.

He's got this covered.

But we had a perfect day the other day in Scotland.

J.D.

was there after his graduation ceremony.

And we got out the pitching machine.

We have like, it's technically a cricket bowling machine that we have modified to pitch baseballs.

And

we were hitting balls out in the field.

And Finn had his little tractor, his souped up tractor with the trailer on it.

And he was like riding around with a batting helmet on.

And he was collecting all the balls as we would hit them.

So we were just cranking them out there.

And then he was zipping around out there.

It was like the perfect day.

Yeah, that was a lovely little summer memory for sure.

Well, I want to say a big thank you to today's summer memories, Tion Koontz, and Nick.

Thank you both so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com/slash morning somewhere.

All right, well, that does it for us today, July 9th, 2025.

I will be back with a special guest to talk to you tomorrow.

I hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.