Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - In Defense of Wearing the Same Shorts All Summer

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Soren and Daniel, two best friends and comedy writers, share the specific ways they're a little bit gross. Learn about (or feel validated by) infinity spoons, towels of considerable mileage,wearing one pair of shorts all summer, and what our keyboards teach us about our hands.This is vulnerable stuff, so we hope if you're a little gross too you'll let us know in the comments. You can also find us on instagram at instagram.com/qqsorenanddan .Find Soren & Daniel on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialThanks to Rocketmoney.com/qq . It could save you hundreds a year.

I've got a quick quick question for you alright I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick quick question for you alright The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favorite? How did you get it? How do I be remembered? Words without a word at all Who are you going to be? I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the

podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of that podcast. Senior writer for last week's night with John Oliver, author of How to Fight Presidents by Daniel O'Brien and Bachelor boy Daniel O'Brien joined as always by my co-host Mr. Soren Bowie. Soren say hello. Hello everybody. I'm Soren Bowie. I'm a writer for American Dad. I just had some Burger King and I'm feeling pretty good. And because I feel good after I eat fast food, I keep doing it. I'm not

one of those people who feels bad afterwards and so that's been a big problem for me. Thanks to Rocket Money for supporting our podcast. Rocket Money will quickly and easily identify your subscriptions for you so you can stop paying for the ones you don't want. Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way by going to rocketmoney.com slash QQ.

It's unfortunately, every piece of fast food I've ever eaten has always been exactly what I wanted it to be. I've never in my life been let down by McDonald's or Taco Bell. And even when I'm sick from it afterwards, that's my fault. So what I'm even saying is that I eat that food, I will eat a bunch of French fries. And in this case, I'm eating like a impossible burger

because it's a Whopper from Burger King. I will get done with that and drink a whole soda and feel fantastic. Feel like, ah, this is how I'm supposed to feel. And like, feel like ready to go with the rest of my day. And that's the biggest problem. I shouldn't, I should feel like shit after I eat that stuff. I should feel heavy and down.

And that's why, that's how you stop eating that kind of thing. But when I get through it and I'm like, God, now I finally feel like I have some energy. It's better than that rabbit food salad I had yesterday. Yeah, I did like a I did like a soft meal prep this week because I mentioned being a bachelor boy, my fiance is out of town. She in Los Angeles for a week. And so I just like, I was like, I'm going to use this week and make very healthy

decisions and it starts with I'm'm gonna prep a bunch of food. So I can have the same lunch every day and the same dinner every day. And it's gonna be not a lot of calories. And it's gonna have the things that you're supposed to have in a meal plan. It's gonna have some protein. It's gonna have some veggie.

It's gonna have other stuff. And it's just been such a fucking bummer man eating my stupid chicken pesto with asparagus for lunch every day and just thinking this is this is what science has decided I need and I just disagree I think it would be better if I got to have just a couple of bacon cheeseburgers from McDonald's well you and you just know in your heart you could go do that at any moment. You're an adult with funds for that. And it's so easy. And that's the problem. It's like, there was a time in my life when I would see commercials for some new crazy shit that Long John Silververs was doing that looked good to me.

But I would be like, it's not for me. I'd have to have somebody drive me all the way to Glenwood Springs and then I have to convince him to give me some money. Like, that just wasn't going to happen. And so it wasn't for me. And so it was so easy for me to turn away from it. And convincing yourself that these things aren't for you is... You've already indulged in them. You fucked up.

You've already indulged and proven that they are for you. And in fact, I feel great after I do it. And so now it's I'm doomed. Yeah. And it's again, just the consistency of knowing that they're going to do it exactly the way I like it every single time is... I've done a thing. I don't know if we've talked about this on the podcast or if anybody gives a shit, but

I started eating a salad for lunch every day. Dinners I can't control because I have my children there and we're going to eat whatever children will also eat. So that's already a sudden cost. That's a loss. But I can choose what I'm having each day for lunch. And I tried that thing where I was like trying a bunch of different very healthy meals.

And that was way worse than me just picking the same healthy meal and eating it every single fucking weekday. Because then it was just filling the dog food bowl and there was no expectation for something other than that. And when I was doing that, I was back on like, I was like, okay, I figured it out. This isn't a thing I look forward to anymore, which is like a very dark way of putting it. But this is just something I have to do every day.

I will feel the same full by the end if I eat enough of it, and then it will be over and that will be it. And so I started doing that and it was way easier. But the minute I start throwing in anything else or giving myself any sort of license of like, you know, go really well with this is maybe like a little garlic bread. It fucks it all up because then I'm like, well, if I'm going to have garlic bread, I might as well go get some pasta. I might as well do like a real Italian meal.

Let's just go. I took a break from my daily salads to have this stupid veggie chicken pearl couscous meal put up right now but I also this is gonna sound like we have like terrible relationships with with food and Soren, maybe we do. We probably do. I don't know, listen to us. We probably do. But I started doing a new gym class that's like seven in the morning. So I'm out the door by 6.40 to do an hour long class.

It gives- Terrible. Just a hit class, like a big sweaty workout. Yep, I wanna die. Now I'm gonna- That sounds awful already. Go on. Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna go home and even though I've like pretty consistently been doing breakfast bars every day for a couple of years now,

it's like, you know what would be a nice indulgence after this class is a bagel. Bagel with some business on it. And I'm not gonna stop at a bagel place and get one bagel where it would be overpriced. So I should probably get a sack of bagels from the store. And then I would probably need some dairy-free cream cheese for it and maybe avocado.

And how else can I dress up this bagel? And I really enjoyed it, but like, fucked myself by eating bagel sandwiches every day for like six days straight until I was out of bagels in that bag because I'm not gonna freeze them and I'm not gonna throw them out and they're going bad. So I need to eat them. And it's just like, I can't, I've gone from eating

like a 200 calorie protein bar every morning to now a sandwich, essentially a little breakfast burger every day. You're eating, yeah, you're eating the prime ingredients for cheesecake every single morning. Yeah. Yeah, I, man, I'm there right there with you. I think it's probably not a super healthy relationship I have to food, but I do the exact same thing. Where like, if I allow myself a leniency, I don't eat breakfast, but if in the morning, I know that I've got like, I'm gonna have my kids all day, we're going to a pool or something like that. I'm like, I'm gonna get really pissy and kind of irritable if I don't have something in me before lunch. So, all right, I'll just have some life cereal or like whatever they're having.

I'll have one of these frozen waffles and then I'll be like, oh my God, eating in the morning is incredible. This is wonderful. And the next day my body's like, okay, what's it going to be today? Something with hollandaise sauce? What are we doing? And then like breaking out of that cycle. Does anybody else remember Pop Tarts? Is it just me? Breaking out of that cycle is, it's really hard all of a sudden. So I just, the more that I can avoid having to make any choice, the more my, the less

my body expects. I grew up with a mom who was, she treated food like a penance, which meant that if it tasted good, it was really probably pretty bad for you. And so if she ate something that was really, really gross, she would latch onto it and be like, this has gotta be the best thing. This has gotta be good for you because it tastes so bad. And so throughout my early childhood,

it was like every single day she would be eating and she still kind of does it, but like she eats food that is, she's convinced herself she likes because she's pretty sure it's good for her because it tastes bad, which is such a weird backwards way of looking at it. But in some cases, I mean, she's right. She's right on like kale. Kale is, there's not a single person in the world who is like, ah some fresh kale

Can't wait to get this in my dad. I can't wait to force this bark down my throat But you gotta there's all kinds of prep work that's to be done to it And then you got to drown it in other stuff like lemon juice and vinegar and stuff They she'll just eat raw kale and I'm like, ah, I don't think you actually like this I don't think I don't think this is helping. And whatever you're getting from it is not worth it. No, I've determined. Yeah, that's it.

Not nourishing your soul. No. So let's get into our show. What do you think? That's a good idea. That's gonna be a good idea for us to do for once. We have been trying to do the show for like three weeks now. Yeah.

And we just haven't done it. We just had to talk about our stuff. It's a testament to how much we wanna talk to each other, I think, Daniel. I know, it's sweet. We get on the phone, we get on the horn with our video conference and we just, we're like, what are you, what's going on with you, man?

What do you, how you doing? All right, sure. Great. Yeah, we're going to get vulnerable with this quick question. I think we might. I can't speak for you. I might turn off a lot of people when I get real, but I wanted to know what in your house is something that gets a lot of use, but that you you really neglect it in terms of cleaning it. This is just something that use often.

But it might some might find it shocking how little attention it gets from a cleanliness. I'm gonna go first because I have three of them. Sure, go ahead. Get the ball rolling and they're all. It's all OK. I'm not doing anything. Gross. I've decided. And there's reasons for all that. Go ahead. So.

The the which one do I think is safest? So every morning I'll have between two and four cups of coffee in my Keurig machine. I make them one pod at a time. My Dunkin Donuts coffee and then directly next to the machine I have a spoon rest with a little turtle on it. It's very cute. And I have a spoon and I put two packets of poisonous, healthy, good for me sugar in the coffee. And I stir it with that spoon and I put that spoon back in the spoon rest. And there it lives for, I don't wanna say weeks, but I definitely don't want to say months.

So I'm going to just say weeks. And the reason that I'm allowed to do this is because coffee is hot and hot is clean. So the spoon doesn't get, it's not like I'm putting the spoon in my mouth where it's dirty and it's not like I'm putting the spoon into like I don't know pie or candy something that for whatever reason my gut has told me would be worse than coffee. Coffee is is hot and hot as clean so the spoon doesn't get gross, and I use it until, even though I have told myself it's okay, and I'm not doing anything gross, or not doing anything wrong,

there is still something in my gut that is like, it's time to trade this out for a different spoon. Nothing has changed, but I feel, I no longer feel like I believe me when I say that it's fine. It's it's one. Hold on. Let me let me ask some questions about this. It's like a little shit, a little tray for the spoon, right? Yeah. How often does that little tray get cleaned?

Same amount of time. Fair package deal. Yeah. OK. So and the coffee has some sugar in it, right? Some sweeten it. It's a little curing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So and the coffee has some sugar in it, right? Something sweet in it. It's a little Keurig. Yeah. Yeah. Stevia. And then have you this is like not related. Have you ever just seen like fruit flies in your house or have you ever seen like crickets or bugs? The fruit flies do not attack the spoon. We get we get all kinds of like.

Beached gnats and stuff that that pop out, but they don't have it. I'm not going to suggest that they're laying eggs in there or anything like that. What I'm suggesting to you is that, first of all, on a microscopic level, you've got the sugars on there. And so all that's happening each day when this gets wet is it just is creating this really great moist environment for bacteria and mold. And generally probably like more of like a slime mold. But if you were to like just go and touch that spoon before you put it back in and see, you might feel that it's a little slippery. Then on top of that, you also, anything that happens to also be in your house is occasionally landing on that and being like, oh, what a nice little treat.

And the way that I eat is I throw up on it a little bit and digest it outside my body and then slurp up the slurry. Sure. So there's a lot of that going on on the spoon too. Now all this is to say, if that kind of thing, that can only bother you aesthetically. If you're not getting sick, then who the fuck cares? Don't ever, it can, from time immemorial to in perpetuity, this spoon never has to be washed. So I think that you're doing fine. I'm just saying if the thought and the knowledge that you have a

lot of living things each day that you're putting into your coffee or pieces of living things, then wash it. Listeners well know that I am saving for a wedding right now. And whether you're saving for a wedding or anything else, you, like me, know that every penny counts. Well, Rocket Money saved me quite a few pennies. Rocket Money found a bunch of subscriptions that I forgot about, things that I hadn't used since 2020

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on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash qq. That's rocketmoney.com slash qq. Rocketmoney.com slash QQ rocketmoney.com slash QQ. It's a really tough thing because no one is asking me to do anything about this. I'm fine living my life this way. And I truly believe me when I say the heat is the solution here because. I can tell.

If you're, it's not quite my water is the solution, which is another one of my theories that we'll get to later. But like when you're camping, you you boil water and the heat makes it better. So this is basically the same process. I've got like really hot water in my coffee mug. And so everything about it is hygienic. I truly think that. But I also know that like, if my parents came over and they reached for it, I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don't want that spoon. That spoon is, there's nothing wrong with it. It's perfectly fine. It's not for you. It's just for me. It's not for you. It's just for me.

I have a little bit of that in me with I have a mug by my sink for brushing my teeth. Like where I'll brush my teeth and I'll drink out of this mug. It happens to be a porcelain mug because I've tried a glass before and I've shattered it maybe six or seven times and learned my lesson. And mugs don't shatter as big. And so I have a mug and it's a white mug And so that you really don't see much going on but there was a day where like I just picked it up and

Saw two black dots in the bottom and I was like, what is that and then went to touch it and realized the whole bottom was fair very slimy and that these dots were the beginning of some actual like Visual visual mold like some mold that I could actually see but that Something else had already been incubating there for quite some time Yeah, that's not That's not great One of my other ones and I think this will be more common than the infinity spoon is the

if I Wasn't living with another person, I can't guarantee that the towel I use to dry myself off after every shower would ever see a washing machine. I'm not doing it for my fiance. It's not like she is on my case about it or anything like that. Or I'm embarrassed. But I definitely do it more

because she is here and like I can see the visual cues of like her standard towel is gone. That must mean it's it's time according to some kind of logic that she has that I don't agree with, but I don't want to get in a fight about it. So I just wash my towel when she does. But in my heart and my bones, the towel, I come out of the shower. It's only ever seen you clean. Clean as a whistle. Yeah. I'm so clean. And then I put the towel on me that I'm just putting clean water on it. And then I'm hanging the towel up. And then in the night, the towel, you know, takes care of itself, the way towels do whatever process, I think something happens in the night, while it dries, Whatever process, I think something happens in the night while it dries, because dry is a form of heat.

And heat, we all agree, is clean. So water and heat are the only things that touch the towel. And it's fun. Moisture and warmth. It's always fun. Nothing grows in moisture and warmth. Absolutely nothing. I know you need to wash your towels.

No, I understand. I also don't know that you need to do that, I think. But yeah, I know that we do. But have we tried not have we just tried it? Because I should let our listeners know that I have tried it for long periods of time, just drawing myself with the one towel and there's no weird shit on me and I smell great and I found someone to love me that I haven't driven away with some like surprise body odor thing. So you tell me, America.

Is it better if I wash that towel every day and waste so much water? You know the answer to that. No one's washing their towel every day. Yeah. Unless you count the work it's doing on your body, a good washing of it. I get those, put it right across your abs when it's all wet.

That's basically just as good as washing it Absolutely, I I'm with you. I mean, I'm with you to a degree where most of my life I lived that that very same way and it wasn't until I would start toweling myself off put the towel down and be like I Don't I think I smell worse than when I originally got out of the shower. What's the difference? Oh, whatever's all over the towel is now all over me. And I think it is just another, like a mold situation. It's a situation where like you... Smell do?

Yeah, smell do. It's like the towel starts to not smell good and it has nothing to do with you. It has to do with you have created a wet, warm environment again every single day, where there's new opportunity for a breeding ground for little microbes. And also, you don't have to wash that every day. But I did get embarrassed by it. My wife at one point, and then girlfriend, was like, you got gotta wash your towel. And I was like, okay.

She's like, it stinks. And I'm like, okay. She's like, it stinks at the whole bathroom. And I was like, okay. Oh, you're trying to form a core memory. You don't want me to forget this. Yeah, yeah. It was like, she was trying to attack.

I was not getting it. And she had to keep being like, I'm hitting you right now, I want you to know that. And so, and it did. I mean, it worked for me. The problem is, Daniel, you start noticing it everywhere. Once you like, once you start pulling at this thread where you're like, I could stand to be a little cleaner, I bet I don't really notice it, but I'm sure that if it bothers

her, I'm going to be a little cleaner, I bet. I don't really notice it, but I'm sure that if it bothers her, I'm going to be cleaner. And then it becomes your bedsheets noticing like how often you really should be washing your bedsheets compared to how often you currently are. And then it starts being like couches and fabrics in general. And then you go to somebody else's house. And all of a sudden, you are disgusted in ways you didn't know you could be. Where you're like you walk into somebody else's house and immediately it's apparent to you that the kitchen isn't actually clean, even though everything's picked up.

Or like the living room clearly hasn't been cleaned even though you're not seeing anything. It's just like this general smell or aura of it where you're like, oh, this is dirty. This is dirty and they don't know. There's stuff I willfully put out of my mind, like a table runner that lives on our table, a fabric runner right down the center of it that we're never eating on that. We have like placemats, but I know the food particles are around and I know like placemats, but I know the food particles are around. And I know that I didn't ever lift up the runner and clean underneath it, or like run the runner through the washing machine.

Yeah. And like, if I don't want to think about it too hard, it was like, well, we don't do anything under that runner. We're never like spilling things, nothing ever, it never sees any action or any light. My sins don't live down there. It's gotta just be as clean as if something had just come off the factory floor.

It's as clean as if we just popped it right out of the box. And then the real part of my brain will just be like, sir, how could it be? How could this thing that has been living on your table touched by you when you're sweaty after a run? How could it, explain it to me, how could it possibly be clean under there? This thing that has never seen a fucking damp rag

to wipe it down, how could it conceivably be clean? How could it not? The same way underneath my oven is completely clean. Watch when I move the oven out of the way. This has never seen the world. Look how gorgeous and pristine it is down there. Yeah, I do know that feeling. Let me let me give you one. Great. I'm looking at it right now. I don't have great. I don't have tremendous confidence that you're going to like my third one. Okay. This one's pretty gross. But I think it's also probably pretty common. So remember everybody that you're on our side. I have, and I always have, had just embarrassing keyboards for my computers.

Yeah. Like not just crud down between the keys. That's all pretty standard. Sometimes food crumbs, not clear. Not clear if those are food crumbs or somehow like boogers or what has caused those. But then also the keys themselves are, I don't know how to describe it other than it looks like I was impacting the key so hard that it was singed

around the outside of my fingertip, where you get that like, what I can describe as like a bathtub being emptied, and then there's that ring of filth around the outside. That's what it looks like. It looks like the indent of the key, there's a little of filth around the outside. That's what it looks like. It looks like the indent of the key, there's a little ring around the outside of what I assume is just years of finger oils. Yeah.

And every once in a while, I do this thing where I go, and I blow and a couple of things go away and I'm like, done. Yeah. That looks perfect. But I've now taken my computer other places, opened it up,

immediately shut it. Because it didn't even occur to me to think that this might be dirty until I was in the presence of other humans, seeing it through different eyes, that I thought, this is genuinely embarrassing for me to open a computer here. No one should see this. My computer is filthy. Not this one as much as my old one, because this one's newer.

But the old one, weirdly the's newer, but the old one. It'll get weirdly weirdly the keys stopped working on the old one. So I just got a new computer. But when I still had the old one, I this is like the Emmys a couple years ago, we were still all on zoom. They weren't doing in-person ceremonies yet. And my friend and coworker, Kay, I brought her over to, like, live stream with us and our other coworkers to watch the results together. And not only with the keyboard, like the whole computer, like noticeably filthy. Another thing that I didn't realize I did until I guess there was another person who can like observe the Schrodinger's cat of my life is that I had the camera lens on my laptop covered up

because I don't want Mark Zuckerberg and Big Brother stalking me on my computer so I have that covered up and not with like a piece of fancy like artisanally crafted tin foil or anything like that just I had a fucking bandaid that was like this is this is two things it both blocks it and sticks it this way I don't have to waste tape or like cut up a piece of thing. I'm just going to put this opaque bandaid and like it was never used on anything else. I didn't like it off my arm. It didn't matter.

I like it in the wild is the grossest thing you could possibly say. Bandaid in a while that like I was peeling off my computer and then very absently setting it aside to put it back on later. And then I could just feel the energy of my coworker. It was like, oh, I don't think I'm allowed to do this. I don't think this is okay. That was so magnanimous of Kay not to say anything.

What a good person. The Band-Aid is rough. Anytime you see a Band-Aid, it's been drilled into your head, don't touch that Band-Aid if it's an open Band-Aid in the world. It's such a bummer. Whenever I'm someplace, I'm at the food pantry where you're like in enclosed space with people. And I see a bandaid on the ground and just like, fucking who? Which I need to know which one of you is down a bandaid and you're just, you're just out loose out there in the world now touching things. What was that bandaid doing a second ago that is not doing anymore? I know it wasn't something harmless

like protecting my security on my laptop. I know it was something gross. I know it was on your body somewhere. Yeah. Man, that one is, that one's pretty rough. I also have occasionally noticed how dirty my keyboard is, continued on working and done nothing about it. And then at the end of it, I'm done writing or whatever.

I'm like, done for the day. I'm going to push sleep on the computer and just watch the screen fade to black and just seeing this Jackson Pollock of what I assume is like spit or whatever the fuck is coming off of me and hitting the screen and I'm just not bothering to ever do anything about. And it's horrifying. It's horrifying how much of me is in this computer. Yeah, it's one of those things that I get to my mid thirties and it's like, oh, it's crazy.

We never figured out how to clean laptops. Yeah, we should. Let me Google that. Let me see if we actually, oh no, everybody does that. I see, I understand now. Okay. I see. I am an incurious person.

At Cracked, we had desktops and we had the kind of keyboard that was separate from the computer and you plugged it in. And then I do remember one day there deciding it was enough, deciding this was just too much filth and unplugging it and taking it to the trash can and just turning it over and shaking it. And like the snow globe of Viscera that I created was hugely embarrassing. Like in a way where I was like, I don't think this is something I should be even doing in public. There's so much coming out of this that it's genuinely disgusting even me. And it's only me in there. And it's all because it's all...

It's all you, right? It's all your cells and just like chunks of finger and stuff. Yeah. It's just a reminder of how oily and gross you are. I've been at my computer at my house. Our setup that we used to have was I was faced up against a wall in the house and I would wear, I wouldn't wear shoes in the house,

so I'd either be barefoot or in socks, and then pulled the desk away at one point to move things around and reorganize. And just like the black film at the bottom of the wall for where my feet were sitting up against it, where I was like immediately humiliated and disgusted with myself that I was creating all of this. It's no good.

My other one that, I think my logic in the first two examples are pretty airtight. I think it's pretty healthy and hygienic and good. Hot is clean, wet is clean. We're done pretty healthy and hygienic and good. Hot is clean. Wet is clean. We're done. It's hygienic. This one is pure laziness and it changes probably about once a year. I am wearing my shorts of the summer. They're the shorts that I got at the start of the summer and it was like, honey, get used to seeing these.

These are my walking around the house shorts. They are not for the rest of the world. They are my comfortable slip-on shorts that I'm, for too long, I pull from the same pile of like my walk around the apartment shorts are interchangeable with like running shorts and workout shorts. And I'm just going through too many pairs of shorts and it seems wasteful.

And so to solve my own problem, like a pioneer, I'm just gonna wear these shorts all the time. And I think that's fine. If I spill something on them, sure, I'm not an animal. I'll wash them when it becomes convenient. But otherwise, I'm not pissing and pooping on myself, so I'm not getting any of that stuff on there and I'm not running around outside where there's dirt. getting any of that stuff on there. And I'm not running around outside where there's dirt. I'm not playing with bugs. I'm in my clean home, sitting on the couch in my shorts. And at night, I will take them off and put them on the ground so they can wait for me to rejoin me the next day.

And by this time next year, these shorts will be a distant memory. I will have purchased a different pair of summer shorts, and that's going to be the look of 2025. But for now, it's these blue, way too short shorts that I love. And I would not wash them because I need them. What would I wear if I was washing them? And and they're near the wettest, warmest part of your body. And we've already determined they're the cleanest, therefore the cleanest. I. I. I know how it sounds. I know. I know it's the crotch and the butt. I know. I know it's the crotch and the butt. I know. I know that's where things get damp

and bad. I know that when I said I'm not pissing or shitting on myself, the listeners were like, yeah, we weren't worried about that. That's not the only thing. It's just it's all the sweat in the darkest, most sinful place on your body. Yeah, but also, I mean, there are genes you get, and the genes are like, specifically saying them, don't fucking wash these. In those terms, the tag says don't fucking wash these. Don't you even think about it. I would say a bunch of people in the world, you tell them, do you wash your jeans? They're like, no, you're not supposed to wash jeans.

You're like, okay. But then what do we all do? Yeah, I guess I'll just keep living in these. So there are like pants that are designed that way. You have a layer of protection between you and the shorts themselves. There's no harm in just, you have a season of those shorts you and the shorts themselves. There's no harm in just... You have a season of those shorts and then the shorts are gone. The shorts stop existing as far as you're concerned.

And I can't fault you for that. I think that that's reasonable. And here's the situation. The situation is this. I'm not an unreasonable person. If I thought the shorts needed to be washed, they'd be washed. That sounds like a good plan to you. Okay. Yeah. Do you ever know that I ever think they need to be washed?

I do not. This is a pretty gross question. But do you ever just grab them while you're not wearing them? Push them into your own face and take a deep inhale. Of course. Okay, great. Then you're fine. You're doing fine. Then if you're still wearing those shorts after doing that, then you're in good shape.

Because that's something I will, I love my children. I will do that to my own clothes. I won't even do that to theirs because it's so, the prospect of what I would smell is so horrifying in another person's... But like, that's how you test yourself. It's since time immemorial, since we were living in caves, I think that's how you would determine whether I'm presentable to the outside world, is if I get as close as humanly possible, a place no one else will ever be, in this lion pelt, and I'm okay with it, then the world's gonna be fine with it. I'm my harshest critic. no one else will ever be in this lion pelt,

and I'm okay with it, then the world's gonna be fine with it. I'm my harshest critic. Yeah. I wouldn't lie to me. I have nothing, there's no benefit for me to be stinky in the world. So I can trust me. I'm looking out for me.

Last night, my wife found a pair of my daughter's tights on the ground. She's like, are these clean? And then she went to go do that test. And I was like, don't, no, don't. Let's just wash them. You don't have to take the psychic damage of whatever you get from that. They're so small. Let's just throw them in the hamper with everything else. It costs us nothing. Don't do that for another person. So funny. Just be happy.

Have a little respect for yourself. Yeah, but I think my keyboard is my very worst one. I obviously used to have a lot more. When I was younger and lived for the first time alone after college, I mean, I lived with a roommate, but I also had my own apartment. At the end of it, friends came over to help us clean it because back then, your friends would do anything for you. And so we were getting ready to leave.

We wanted our deposit back. And so as we're moving out, we had some friends help clean it. A good friend of mine, Kim Kerry Tyerman, she was going to help clean my bathroom. And she did. And then afterwards came up to me and she was like, that was the worst bathroom I've ever seen. I was like, oh, shit, I'm sorry. She's like, I've lost a lot of respect for you.

And like showing it in a very earnest way. I was like, okay, yeah, point taken. Okay, I will from this point forward, never be in this situation again, because that feels brutal. Yeah. That's a very, I would like to talk to her about that because I'm not gonna name someone,

but I know you know who I'm talking about, who was a friend of ours, who was our age, who lived in absolute unconscionable filth. And I was never, I don't have a personal precedent for telling or being told you can't live like this. But I really like grabbed with it. I would be at one of the various homes that he's lived in in the 10 years that I knew him in Los Angeles. And like, there's all the stuff you expect. There's the the the clumps of of hair and neglect dust that just like piles up behind doors and corners in the

bathroom where just like, this looks like someone in in college lives here and they don't clean behind their toilet because they're in college. There's all that like very obvious stuff, but there would also be like he took a trip out of state for a long time and then he came back and had left a plate of food on his bedroom floor that entire time and this was the only time I said anything to him about about how he was living but I was like, hey, I don't want to embarrass you there is a Tremendous amount of ants in your room I think they seem to be coming from that corner over there and going right to the plate of old food on your floor

This is me playing detective. I think that's what's happening. Sleuthed it out. As I'm like panicking inside and he was just like, oh, that's embarrassing. That shouldn't be like that. He picked up the plate and he brought it to the kitchen somewhere and like vacuumed up the ants. And that was the solution to that problem that day.

But between that and like everything else I've seen in his home, I was very... it almost seemed like an intervention would be the only ticket because I just thought like he can't live like this, but he's got to know that it comes from a place of love and that we're looking out for him. But like, dark thought, who will ever love him? Who will accept living like this and being in this and sharing this kind of space. We just it's it's for his own good, but we need to do something. But I eventually did nothing because. That's the kind of because I've never had that conversation. I don't know if it would be like, how dare you? I don't know if it would turn into a fight or anything or if or worse than a fight.

He would just be like. Yeah, man, I decided kind of a while ago that like this was, it wasn't a good use of my energy or time to think about this aspect of my life, so I just don't do it. And I'm much happier as a result of how much free mental health I've given myself by just deciding I'm the kind of person who lives like this.

And I'm like, okay, great. I'm glad you had that decision. I, we can't be friends anymore. I can't. I just can't do it. So that is, it's bad. It's really bad. And it's really bad when you notice somebody

who is more filthy than you are comfortable with. Yeah. The issue is that's a sliding scale. And to somebody else, you're that person. No. Somebody else. I'm not saying you are that way.

I've been to your places and you are immaculate because you have a phobia of bugs. So you do take very good care of the places you live. But it is a scale. There's always somebody who in every relationship, somebody who sees more dirt or more disorder than the other person. And it's a constant fight. That's a war that never ends because Either one of you one of you has to change either one of you has to concede and live in somewhere They're not comfortable and there are things more dirty or the other person has to say you mean more to me than

then Any of this and so I will clean up. I will just clean up even though I don't think anything needs cleaning. Anything that even though I don't see it, I'm going to continue to try. And uh, and so it means that there's like a whole scale of that. There's a broad spectrum of people and somebody else, they, I guarantee somebody has come over to my house before and been like, oh fuck, I don't even want to sit down in here. Like, that's got to have happened. Because sure, and I don't know if that means that I'm unhealthy or they're unhealthy or

anything like that, but like, it's, it has to have with the spectrum that there is. I know that there are people who are far cleaner than us and far more immaculate with their houses and how they're upkeep of like cleanliness. Yeah. So, someone has grossed out by me currently. I can almost guarantee it. Yeah. Yikes.

Yeah. Well, show is quick question. This was a pretty vulnerable one. Don't. Here's the interesting thing. Don't come at me with anything. If you wanna bring to me a study that says my theory on towels is bullshit, I'm not gonna read it.

If you're gonna come to me and say, I do the same thing, we're the same, we are not the same. I don't want to hear that either. I just want to talk my shit sometimes and then not think about it ever again. This is one of those times. Thank you for watching and listening to Quick Question. We are on YouTube. If you didn't know that already, you can watch our faces as we talk about these things and be surprised at how I didn't turn red with embarrassment once this whole time. You can find Soren and I on Blue Sky having fun making jokes. You can email the show at qqwithsorenanddanielatgmail.com You find us on Instagram, you find us on Patreon where we answer questions from

you, the listener. We do it two times a month. It's very fun. You can hear more music from the band that did our theme song, Merex.Bandcamp.com. We are recorded and engineered and presided over by Gabe Harder and today Jacob Weinstein, a special thanks to them for making the show happen. And that is all of the things we say at this part of the show, correct? Great. Hell yeah. At this point also, if something falls off the back, it hardly matters.

Yeah. If people just listen to another episode and you'll get all the pertinent information. Yeah. Okay, bye. Bye. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. I wanna hear your thoughts,

wanna know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you, all right. The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we can talk tonight. So what's your favorite? How did you get it? Where did I meet you? I remember

What did I do? I'm blurted out Where did all the You got to be Oh forget it I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers

If there's an answer they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here.