Swedish Sailor Soap

**Merlin Mann** (0:08)
Well, let's get straight to business, John. Do we have any follow-up this week?

**John Siracusa** (0:11)
We do. Although, you know, we really stretch the definition of follow-up on this show, because it's like we'd have so little of it, and when anything comes up that's on like one of our long-running topics that we've discussed before, chances are good that one or two episodes ago, we've discussed it, so technically, it's follow-up. But anyway, I like it.

**Merlin Mann** (0:28)
It's like getting a letter when you're a little kid. I mean, your idea of getting letters might be, you know, Miracle on 34th Street, but like getting a letter from a person, we're getting letters from people, John, you can just remember that.

**John Siracusa** (0:38)
Yeah. So this feedback is, or this tidbit is from, let's see, Taylor HWLL, let's say, I believe it's on Blue Sky.
And they pointed out a baseball secret weird thing people do. They were quote, quote skeeding, quote posting something from the awful announcing Blue Sky account that said, and it's posting a video of a play by play of a baseball game with the announcers talking over the baseball action. Baseball action doesn't matter, it's just the announcers talking to each other, as often happens, I think, in baseball games where there's a lot of downtime in baseball games, nothing exciting is happening, and the announcers will start talking to each other about something while the game goes on behind them. That's a thing you can do in baseball because it's not really that action packed during segments. Anyway, awful announcing says, Ben McDonald's admits he has never used shampoo in his life during today's Oriole game on MASN on August 2nd. Did you listen to this clip?

**Merlin Mann** (1:44)
Should I?

**John Siracusa** (1:44)
Yeah, so this is-

**Merlin Mann** (1:46)
The awful announcing link?

**John Siracusa** (1:47)
Yeah. A lot of people send things in, they're like, is this a secret weird thing? What about this? What about that?
This, I think, is basically a canonical in public secret weird thing, probably the highest form, which is it didn't just happen within a private group or something that you heard about. This is broadcast on live television only a few days ago, where it definitely seems like Ben McDonald discovers that he has a secret weird thing. And it's hard to tell because sometimes people pretend that they're saying something that like, what? This isn't weird at all.

**Merlin Mann** (2:23)
It's almost like Kubla Ross, John. I mean, I think there are levels of rejection where first you're like, what? Like, what's the big deal? And then sometimes people are like, yeah, I just, like me, often I would say probably something like, well, I just like doing it differently. That's great. But to have that, we luckily, we have the good fortune to not be on TV when people, when we are forced to confront our secret weird thing we've been doing.

**John Siracusa** (2:44)
I mean, well, we're on a podcast, but obviously a lower viewership. Please watch it.

**Merlin Mann** (2:48)
A little bit of high of comradish.

**John Siracusa** (2:50)
You think you use the same amount of product in your hair as Brandon Marsh does? No way.

**Merlin Mann** (2:56)
For me, it's just a bar of soap. A bar of soap?

**John Siracusa** (3:00)
Yeah.

**Merlin Mann** (3:00)
I've never used shampoo. Not once ever.
Just a bar of soap in the hair.

**John Siracusa** (3:07)
Okay.

**Merlin Mann** (3:07)
I never use shampoo, not once ever. And that's this fella in the photo below, this NASA looking guy. Right?
I'm curious what your angle on this is. There's a lot of handles on this suitcase you could choose to grab.

**John Siracusa** (3:22)
Yeah. So people who have a secret weird thing, it's possible that they may trot it out, and as you said, pretend that they don't already know that it's weird. But Ben MacDonald here certainly sounds like he's just offhandedly mentioning something, kind of saying, I don't even use shampoo.
I'm just such a basic manly man. That's just a thing that I do.

**Merlin Mann** (3:49)
I think it's less than that. I think it's the fact I learned to write a skateboard on my own and didn't learn the right way to write a skateboard. So I suffer from a phenomenon I think it's called being goofy-footed, which is kind of relevant, where I would be equally bad on a skateboard, no matter I think which way I did it. But the point is, I would toss it off like, oh, I propel myself with my left foot. And everybody else goes, what? I propel myself with my right foot. It seems like he sees it as being that straightforward.