I've Got a Goat Guy

[00:00] So Coalson, we've got an under Google for us this week.
[00:04] It's been a while, I feel like.
[00:05] So I've done this.
[00:06] Yeah, missed it.
[00:07] We took took the summer off.
[00:10] But we're back back to under Google, Google.
[00:19] Oh, we do under Google rules.
[00:21] That was the play of super excited.
[00:23] Told us we had to say it was that we said we signed up for it.
[00:30] In the end, it's going to be better
[00:32] and more true than Google can give you.
[00:35] Is this the kind of thing where you've had a question for like four months
[00:39] and you just didn't get the answer to it because you wanted to save it for this?
[00:42] That is absolutely the case, Joey.
[00:44] I when I there was stuff would come up and I'd be like, I should Google this.
[00:48] And I said, no, I'm just going to put it in my notes
[00:51] and I'll wait for my very smart friends to help me figure out the answer.
[00:55] I hope it wasn't like what time does this flight arrive?
[01:02] So one that occurred to me this summer,
[01:06] I'm out there in the sweltering heat mowing my lawn.
[01:12] And I thought, why the hell do we have lawns?
[01:17] Why do I have to put myself through this?
[01:19] What's the what's the deal with lawns?
[01:22] Yeah, well, I mean, the weird thing about it is you actually don't have to have a lawn.
[01:28] Well, no, that's the thing.
[01:30] Well, no, I know.
[01:30] But like, so I'm actually currently like getting ready to put a patty over
[01:36] most of my yard because I and I've already put zero skipping.
[01:40] Yeah, I've put a deck over half the yard already.
[01:42] So, I mean, I'm one of those guys.
[01:44] But, you know, and I've also lived in Arizona.
[01:47] There's a lot of just rock gardens instead of lawns.
[01:51] I really like those.
[01:53] But I just I thought the only thing I can think of is that
[01:56] it's connected to this idea of wealth or prestige
[02:03] that that you could own space that you weren't living.
[02:08] I mean, that you weren't actually having a house on.
[02:11] And it's kind of showing off how much lawn you had.
[02:16] But really, then you just have to get like a riding lawnmower, which is lame.
[02:21] Well, I think lawns may have this going to be shocking.
[02:24] They may have invented lawns before the riding lawnmower.
[02:27] Well, I'm sure they I'm sure they have.
[02:29] But like I was thinking, like, if you like you've done a castle, right?
[02:34] If you lived in a castle.
[02:35] Yeah, exactly.
[02:36] Probably had some green space outside of that.
[02:38] And that showed that you were wealthy.
[02:39] You know, big book.
[02:40] But what else do you do?
[02:42] What else do big, long clearings of not overgrowth do for you
[02:48] if you're living in a castle?
[02:50] You just see people coming.
[02:52] Line of say, yeah, exactly.
[02:55] OK, so I mean, you should be at your windows.
[02:59] You're the bow and arrow with the bow and arrow where a gun or something
[03:03] at all times line of sight. Yeah.
[03:05] So if I had just big weeds outside of my window,
[03:09] I couldn't see anybody coming.
[03:10] Yeah, people would just sneak through them and then ambush you.
[03:14] How can you tell right now?
[03:15] No idea. When's the last time you cut your weeds?
[03:20] You more and you put up walls all over the place.
[03:23] I did it. I built a bunch of walls, too.
[03:25] Can't see outside. Yeah.
[03:27] Hard at work building a shed.
[03:28] That's where they hide, John.
[03:30] Yeah, I'm just trying to take up my green space.
[03:33] I don't want to know anymore.
[03:34] Just massive shit.
[03:35] And then they take you out behind the shed.
[03:40] Leave no space behind the shed, John.
[03:42] That's a bad idea.
[03:46] Actually, next time I come over,
[03:48] I'll take you out behind there.
[03:49] Give you what's what.
[03:51] Give me what's what.
[03:53] Well, I think this is an interesting question, too,
[03:55] because the law, like grasses, though, are not native.
[04:01] If I am correct to Europe, right?
[04:06] Like most of them are native to the Americas, isn't that right?
[04:09] And then. Well, I don't know,
[04:12] I'm thinking you got your Kentucky bluegrass.
[04:14] Yeah, I think that most grasses are probably.
[04:20] Imported, but like, I mean,
[04:21] what society needed a hundred different types of grass for golf?
[04:25] I mean, maybe they're all Scottish.
[04:27] I don't know. Mm hmm.
[04:28] Good call. And a grass grass is a large family,
[04:32] I guess, of plants, actually, right?
[04:33] Because corn is a grass, I think. Is it right?
[04:37] Uh huh. OK. Oh, is a grass man.
[04:40] Speaking of grass is a grass.
[04:43] Shout out to Canada, which is legalized grass as.
[04:50] No doubt, no doubt.
[04:52] So we're going with it was castles had it.
[04:56] And then the maybe like landed nobleman
[05:03] beyond that is sort of the aristocracy inherited that
[05:08] sort of regime.
[05:10] You had a mansion, so you would have a lawn and then
[05:13] and then suburbia happens and everybody wants to be
[05:16] emulating that type of life.
[05:19] This is my question.
[05:20] I get the emulation and you want to show off that you've got space and lawn,
[05:24] but I want to figure out the jump between line of sight to.
[05:30] The wealthy wanting it is always a straight FU.
[05:33] It's a straight middle finger, right?
[05:35] I've got all this land and instead of using it to be arable,
[05:40] I'm just I'm not going to grow food on it.
[05:42] I'm going to make it look as good as I can.
[05:45] I'm going to make all you guys tend to it. OK.
[05:48] And that'll be my thing.
[05:50] And then and then here.
[05:52] We all so then then it comes to the Americas
[05:56] and we're like, yeah, we want to show off that we can do the same things
[06:01] to the poor people in the neighborhood.
[06:03] Well, or to the Native Americans.
[06:06] Well, I mean, I think you do have an interesting point, which is, you know,
[06:10] how has it come this far?
[06:11] And until somebody has a water crisis, nobody really thinks about it.
[06:16] Yeah, because it is so we all have frickin lawns.
[06:18] It's so inveterate.
[06:21] But I mean, I think that it probably does grow out of that out of that tradition.
[06:28] You're right of proving that you have money by wasting it.
[06:35] OK, I'm wasting my lawn as an FU to people that are hungry.
[06:39] And in the lawn wasting my yard and I guess the lawn became preferred
[06:45] because once one had to tend to some lawn,
[06:50] then that was much easier than, say, having a garden.
[06:52] So I feel like a garden is an equal
[06:56] and not a garden, but a not a fruiting garden.
[06:59] You know what I mean?
[07:00] Like just flowers and hedges and whatnot. Right.
[07:03] Like that's an equal FU to people without land.
[07:08] I mean, you know, if you're going to use your yard, grass is good, right?
[07:12] Like if you want your kids to go out and play out there,
[07:13] you don't just want a muddy rock pit, right?
[07:17] Unless you want them to be tough.
[07:19] And that's exactly what's wrong with America.
[07:23] Too many lawns.
[07:24] Well, you know, there's there's I've got a neighbor across the way
[07:27] that their entire front yard is just like a wildflower field.
[07:31] Like they've got really long grass and a billion bees.
[07:36] I don't want to live next to them.
[07:38] And I just thought, well, it's, you know,
[07:40] I don't think they're out there like pulling weeds all the time.
[07:44] They're just kind of letting it happen.
[07:45] And I just don't know why most yards aren't like that.
[07:48] I guess you're right, because we want our kids to run and play.
[07:51] But I don't have kids.
[07:52] I'm still out there mowing.
[07:54] I don't water.
[07:56] Yeah, I don't either.
[07:57] So therefore I don't have to mow much.
[08:00] Doesn't it rain out there a lot?
[08:02] Not during the summer.
[08:04] Hmm. Does it go back further than castles?
[08:07] So do the people have.
[08:11] Do people like put their mud huts in grassy fields?
[08:16] I doubt it, but the Greeks may have done something similar.
[08:19] They probably cleared land around their fortifications as well.
[08:22] From what I'm seeing, what I'm googling so far, it's
[08:28] that we're sort of spot on that it starts with castles
[08:32] and they originally sort of tended by sheep and goats and whatnot.
[08:37] The White House didn't.
[08:40] Was it Johnson, maybe, or Jackson Wilson?
[08:45] During the Depression, he had he just put sheep out on the.
[08:49] Yeah, he definitely did that.
[08:51] But I think also, I think also.
[08:55] Jackson Jackson, which one was the populist Jackson Jackson?
[08:59] Yeah, I think Jackson did it, too, for some reason.
[09:01] I don't know why that would be noteworthy, but.
[09:06] So I was laughing at the people also ask section of my Google search.
[09:14] The first one was when was grass invented?
[09:18] Good. And the other one, which is even more cryptic,
[09:23] it says, why is the grass question mark?
[09:31] OK, yeah, it says spot on, although it goes back further.
[09:34] It says scientists know the need for humans
[09:39] to surround themselves with low growing turf grass.
[09:43] In Africa, many thousands of years ago, turf grasses of expansive savannas
[09:47] allowed humans to better spot approaching danger.
[09:50] Yes, I mean, there's a good argument to be made that if you believe in evolution,
[09:54] the great rift barrier, which created the savannas, like, got us into bipeds.
[09:58] But like, right, they didn't plan them.
[10:02] There was just like a seismic event.
[10:04] Right. Yeah, as far as popularization goes, I'm reading, you know,
[10:08] the Industrial Revolution brings about the lawnmower, which allows people to,
[10:12] you know, more people to have lawns.
[10:16] And then Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American landscape design.
[10:22] And he does design Central Park.
[10:25] I know that from that book, Devil in the White City,
[10:29] is a very good book.
[10:31] Games, golf, lawnmowing, arts.
[10:35] You know, you can't populate some people who wanted lawns.
[10:39] This one also speaks to farming where most of the areas
[10:43] that weren't dedicated to vegetables, fruit and herbs
[10:46] were central grassy spaces for the sheep and cows to graze.
[10:53] That makes sense that it takes 60 goats
[10:56] about three to five days to clear out a quarter of an acre of dense land.
[11:00] Go, goats. Jason, don't you have a goat guy?
[11:04] Sure, yeah, I got a good guy.
[11:06] You need some goats?
[11:08] Yeah, we'll talk after the show. OK.
[11:11] Well, if I knew you had a goat guy, I wouldn't have paved my whole backyard.
[11:15] I just had a goat.
[11:17] I don't even know if you're.
[11:18] Yeah, he works in big chunks, so.
[11:23] I need more land.
[11:25] Well, that makes sense.
[11:26] I I still like the idea of rock garden.
[11:30] I'm just considering putting it in.
[11:32] I definitely do it.
[11:34] Yeah, I mean, especially as as the climate continues to change
[11:39] and there's continues to be wet water shortages and things, it seems.
[11:44] And also, I just don't like spending my Saturdays mowing along.
[11:46] Yeah, and that's a mess from the labor and gas that you use to mow the camel.
[11:52] Yeah, I just don't know if Coalson can break away
[11:56] from the self-identity of showing off his lawn to his neighbors
[12:01] and proving that he's better because he has stuff I just.
[12:05] So central to this core.
[12:07] Always keeping up with the Joneses and.
[12:11] Well, and you know what I can add on top of this now,
[12:13] my knowledge of why lawns exist to just support my superiority.
[12:18] Yeah, exactly.
[12:19] So I can tear it out and then lord that knowledge over.
[12:22] So win, win, win.
[12:26] You should make one of those those free little libraries
[12:29] in front of your yard, but then also with pamphlets about why you don't.
[12:38] Totally incidental.
[12:39] Yeah, except they'll be called why you're a douchebag
[12:41] because you have a lot. It'll be very subtle.
[12:45] How to make friends.
[12:49] You can get the AstroTurf.
[12:53] Lay that down instead.
[12:54] Yeah, made out of plastic.
[12:56] That's yeah, probably a good idea.
[12:58] Yeah, that'll biodegrade in a million years.
[13:02] Then you'll have to replace it in a million years.
[13:04] You're good to go now.
[13:05] I don't have to cut it.
[13:06] It'll survive a nuclear war.
[13:08] Yeah, be great.
[13:10] I wish my lawn was emo.
[13:12] So cut itself. Oh, my God.
[13:19] Wow, that was actually a lot better than I thought it was going to be.
[13:21] I'll give you that one.
[13:23] That's what you sent me a joke this week.
[13:25] What was that, Coalson?
[13:26] It blindsided me. I'll be honest with you.
[13:29] Did you hear about the guy that got his entire left side amputated?
[13:34] He's all right.
[13:35] Hmm. Yep. Yep.
[13:41] I just said that to Joey on a random day because that was fun.
[13:44] So I tried to I tried to tell my dad that joke that evening
[13:49] when I was on the phone and didn't it didn't go over.
[13:55] It didn't. It went about as well as it did just right now.
[14:00] And then I was like, what?
[14:01] That wasn't my joke. That was Coalson's joke.
[14:03] So, yeah. Yeah.
[14:05] Sounds about right.
[14:06] Yeah. Well, we learned something.
[14:10] Did we?