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Overview
Music and words. Two items that go together. We delve into both topics.
Alan got his latest issue of Prog Rock magazine and we talk about losing some of the music masters. Like usual, we meander and touch on a lot of related topics.
Which leads us to our word talk. How words come into being and words that didn’t start as words. You just gotta hear it to understand.
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Transcript
Alan: Let me change that. Oh, we already got, we’ve already seen that one. Let me just do it quick.
Stephen: Something new and different.
Alan: Exactly. You know, can’t, can’t overdo the wallabies, so, right. See what, what if I, what’s been my theme? Lemme let me find some nice wooded area here since I just went for a nice walk in.
Said Ha. How about that? There we go. Perfect.
Stephen: Nice. Love it. That, that kind of looks like up where I got my cabin. It’s verys. Well, I guess we have a lot more like pines and furs up there, but, okay. It kind of feels the same. There
Alan: we go. Deciduous. I got deciduous going. Lemme, we have to done all this prep already.
Alright.
Stephen: You’re a real pro with all the prep. That, that’s what makes you the pro.
Alan: You know, I gotta, I gotta get the the makeup on and the sound reduction panels.
Stephen: You know, that’s funny you say that because I’m looking at it, I’m like, because it’s hot in here right now, because I stupidly broke my AC and this office is horrible.
It’s like a, a sweat box without the ac Yeah. It was my fault. I’m stupid. So I, I was looking at, well, how did you break
Alan: ac? You did, you overdrive it? How did you break your ac?
Stephen: Okay. I I, I don’t know if I can tell you because my, my MENSA cred will go way down and people will be questioning really? Who did you sleep with and pay off to get into Mensa.
And, and it
Alan: did you poke it with a stick?
Stephen: I, I’m not gonna answer that. I can neither confirm nor deny that question and answer.
Alan: Let’s, you can just gloss right over that it User error. There was mechanical failure and user error. Are the Yeah.
Stephen: Things ensued and happened and I was stupid. So it’s warm in here and I’m looking at myself.
I’m like, yeah, I’m a little sweaty and I’m a little red. And I’m like, where’s our makeup people? Shouldn’t we have makeup people by now?
Alan: You know, I, I think it’s kind of funny. We, we’ve been doing this for a while now, and I, I don’t keep track of exactly what stories I’ve told. I was on TV a couple times doing morning movie reviews because one of the men publicity and outreach things was, let’s Get us Smarty in there when there was a smarty movie.
So at one point the Einstein movie was out. Remember that? Oh, yeah, yeah. The Spice Girls, which was kinda like, yeah, let’s get a smarty in there to talk about this brain trust of a movie. The Spice Girls. Having said that, I, I have was hair light even back then, and they’d like put. You know, powder on me and stuff like that.
And it, I was sweating right through it, not out of nervousness because I’m, I talk pretty well and I’m pretty glib, but in the studio, you don’t realize how many lights are trained right on you in order to get the perfectly natural sunlight indoors, if you will. Right. So at one point after they had like, boo hit me with the big powder puff makeup they, they said, sir, we’re going to have to seal your head.
And they really had to put some, kinda like a lacquer on me and so that I would not be like, sweating on camera like I was a convict that they had brought in to do this. And then what’s funny is, of course, it, it, it all went well. I I had a nice time. It was Fox News in the morning back before Fox had really gone insane.
Then I had done that downtown and I was not working consulting at that point. I was consulting out in the Chicago suburbs. So I get on the train to go home and while I’m walking to the terrain, et cetera, people are giving me the honest looks. And I realize after a while it’s because I’ve got studio makeup on.
I got my head glistening ’cause I’ve been sealed with this varnish and I must have looked really weird, like a, a crazy clown out on the streets, you know, who knows what he is gonna pull out his, his knife. And I just, it was a, an odd fun experience. Waterproof owl.
Stephen: It sounds like an action figure.
Alan: Yeah.
And I, you know what, if I hadn’t, like, I, I’m happy that over the course of the day, I didn’t get, I. Like a reaction to, you know, your head is where you give off a lot of your heat and, and in my case, a lot of my sweat. And if that’s sealed, I could have been like overheating, you know what I mean? It’s kinda like you would throw a blanket over your engine, overheat.
’cause it can’t shed all the energy it’s
Stephen: producing. So how’d you get it? Did it peel off like one big skull cap
Alan: layer? No, I didn’t have to wash my hair head multiple times to where it didn’t feel as like slick and rozay as it had been feeling. But it, and it must be like that, right? They can’t have every guest come in, have to go home and like scrape at it with a, some kind of industrial scraper.
It’s gotta be water soluble ish, even though it did not let me sweat through it. Anyway, that was, sir, we’re going to have to seal your head. You don’t hear that a lot of times in your life.
Stephen: Well, I’m gonna throw it into a book now. I, I’m gonna find someplace to throw that into a book and then you’ll know it’s from you.
But you know, things like that. Unless you’ve actually been in that situation, people just don’t understand and realize how much there really is to some of that. And I haven’t been on tv though when I was in the band, you know, we had the lights from playing on stage a lot, Right. And we did a couple little videos of our own and it’s, you know, it’s crazy.
The lights and you get the reflectors and, you know, and we weren’t professional. Super.
Alan: Yeah. You’re all being, it’s all honed in on you and while you’re trying to look cool, calm and collected, you know, you’re, you’re the, the cool bass player, but you’re getting bathed in all these lights and they, they, the cumulative heat is a lot,
Stephen: so, right.
And, and you probably were there for what, like 45 minutes to an hour and they asked you like 300 questions and you spoke for five or 10 minutes, and then they cut it down to a 32nd soundbite, you know, and just cut little bits and pieces here and there. That did
Alan: what was really nice. One of the dangers of going on, as you know in fact this is no lie.
At one point up on the screen they had Ellen Es comma genius and it’s like, oh, that’s, the world is gonna love that. They always love this. So, but the, the host and hostess were wonderful. Sometimes when Mensa gets interviewed it’s like, almost like attack journalism. They really want to catch you in a mistake.
They really wanna ask you a question, it’ll show you’re not so smart. Instead, they were curious about Mensa. They were very gracious in what kind of things. We talked about the movies and, and, and what, what one of the most fun things they had, you are right. It was probably an hour’s worth of stuff that they cut down into like a, a 10 minute segment.
But the things they chose were good tv, they were witty things, that the exchanges were good between us and that, the stuff I talked about with the movie, and they did little intros and outros where it’s like, this is where we’re gonna, you know, bring you in or we’re gonna go out on the camera. And so they had me doing stuff like, Looking off into the distance stroking my, oh,
Stephen: that’s pretty
Alan: funny for news.
Oh, it, it was, those were, so when they said, you know, do something like that, and then they, you know, they left when I did it and somehow they ended out their laughter because all it was was, you know, the silence of me looking, you know, thoughtfully off into the distance. It really was. I think I’ve done it three times now and it was a great time.
Another thing, you know, I had this experience from Jeopardy, but especially on the news program, what you’re seeing on camera is all like beautiful. Everybody’s be beautifully dressed and made up and the, and the desks are all clear just outside of camera view. It’s chaos. There’s cables everywhere.
There’s the next segment things going on. There’s like a leopard in a cage over here for some fucking reason. You know what I mean? There’s all kinds of crazy going on right around it. But they’ve learned how to hone in on exactly what they wanna be in camera shot, and so, Why like that when you’re walking on stage you have to like step over cables and stuff like that because you don’t wanna say get on Bronk Prep, fall yourself right into the camera range.
Stephen: It was cool. And it’s funny you say that too, because you hear people at times, and this is you know, you hear this a lot from mens of people wanting to find something to complain about. They’re like watching some show that people love. They’re like, ah, yeah, well you think that show’s so great. They never show ’em eating.
They never go to the bathroom. They don’t check the mail. Like, hold on a second, we get a 42 minute. Slice of their life e every week, but they have the rest of their life. We don’t focus on, on that show. It’s just a piece of it, you know? Yeah. And that’s like, shows movies like Star Wars, you know, people will say, oh, well this new thing doesn’t have anything to do with the rebels and it’s not service.
Like, wait a second. That was one little, like, there was a whole universe going on at that time of story.
Alan: That’s right. What they choose to show you of course is, is chosen. You know what I mean? It, it really is that, that these are the, the beats of the story. These are the highlights of the, of the character arc that they’re all in.
You don’t expect it to be real life. Yeah. When I kind of funny, the movies that do that occasionally are startling because like, have you ever seen my dinner with Andre?
Stephen: No I haven’t.
Alan: Two guys talking in a restaurant for two hours and it’s a fascinating conversation that I’m boy Wallace, Sean and I, I shame myself by not remembering ’cause both performances were really good, but I.
Because it was so much not, and then the car exploded. It’s not at all spectacular. It really is very human, very wonderful, but startling because it, it’s kinda like seeing one of Yoko Ono’s videos where it’s like, here’s a building for four hours.
Stephen: You know what I mean? That’s startling in totally different ways.
Alan: Oh, oh, I have such cool, I, I love I love progressive rock. Just read Prague magazine for this month. I, I just loved learning this. So Francis Monkman just died, who was, his, was a great keyboardist. He was with relatively less known Prague act like curved air and sky. And I think they kind of go together really.
And film engineers 8 0 1 group, you know, Manza was big in Roxy music and stuff like that. Having said that, he at one point was having a conversation with. Pete Townsend of the who, as you might know, and he was talking about how much he liked Terry Riley’s works, which were like minimalist, orchestrated compositions back in the sixties and seventies was when they were most popular.
There was one called in particular in Sea and I’ll have to go listen to it. ’cause even though I only read about this last night, I didn’t immediately hop on. There’s apparently like interlock a rhythmic sequences and it’s interesting in a minimalistic way, you know, kinda like Brian Eno has done. And the re so the reason that’s important is because Terry Riley that he told Pete Townsend about apparently Pete Townsend went and listened to his music and liked what he was hearing and did some synthesizer and sequencer runs.
And where does that appear in Baba O’Reilly? Which is a very famous composition of theirs. That’s where the Reilly comes from, is Terry Re’s work. It was an homage, or at least a reference to his stuff and, and you know, Bob O’Reilly, as you know, is not known to most people as Bob O’Reilly. It’s the. Teenage wasteland.
Right? Right. So don’t, don’t raise your eyes. And so I’m getting chilled with like, I haven’t, that’s been around for 50 years all this time. Just yesterday is when I learned that everything has those cool little connections and happenstances and Wonderful. Who knew that Francis Monkman and Pete Townsend even knew each other, right.
Much less that that was directly the inspiration for one of like a classic who song, you know what I mean? That Oh, well,
Stephen: I, I find it pretty amazing that Prague magazine still exists and is around. That’s pretty big accomplishment actually.
Alan: Believe it or not, there’s two, Prague is the one out of England.
It’s one of the few things that I get like imported to me on a regular basis. Every time that I see the charge go through for the continuation of the subscription, I also get a little currency translation charge. It’s like, oh, that’s why, because I continue to buy something regularly out of England.
There’s magazine called Progression that. It’s gone to like quarterly publication. GUE is monthly, progression is quarterly, but it’s like one guy’s labor of love. He’s been doing it for something like 30 years now. John, boy, I’m just not, I’m not good on names today. But, but it is you know, they are wonderful sources for not only nostalgia things.
Let’s go talk to Francis Monkman and, and you know, the Giants Peter Gabriel and stuff like that. There’s continually album reviews, CD reviews of all kinds of new stuff coming up. And I must have discovered dozens if not a hundred various different things. Like, well, that sounds interesting. That’s what this guy’s latest stuff is.
I liked him in wishbone Ash and now he’s doing this thing over here. So it’s just cool that, that little underground of, of finding out that you’re not the only Morian fan. That you’re not the only, you know, you follow Phil Collins work from album to group to album and that kind of stuff. I. And, and I always have to say Frank Zappa has a famous quote that like let’s see.
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, you know what I mean? That there’s automatically, of course, a, a remove a a, you know, how can you write about music? It’s just, in some cases, in cases so emotional and so visceral. And yet it’s cool to see how they do try to describe it. And if anything, just the connections, oh, here’s the latest this festival that’s going on.
That’s like, am I gonna get plane tickets to England because I have to go and
Stephen: see these ILE of
Alan: white open. Exactly. And I’ll, and there’s a club in the Netherlands, if I remember it, probably Amsterdam, that were that right. That, that the lineup for the entire month is like all these great Prague people solo or their bands, but doing it in a club setting.
So when you’re seeing. It, it doesn’t matter. Like there’s 20 out of 30 days a month have, man, if I lived there, I’d be there every night. I, that would be like my home away from home. And it, it just, it’s very cool that some places have that underground, that underground support,
Stephen: you know, like Cbgb was in New York Exactly
Alan: that for the punk movement.
It was where you went. And I’m gonna be going to a thing called Prague stock, which is, I think I might have mentioned, it’s like in, in Rutherford, New Jersey, if I remember right. And it has moved around. They found, they find a home every two or three years and the, the new theater or whatever else it might be, but it’s all kinds of, How, how, what’s the term?
Maybe like a little more obscure, maybe second tier. It’s not the big names in Prague, but anybody who can play Prague is a Virtuo musician. Musician. And I just wanna be there for like three days and hear more notes than you can hear from any other source in the world. And in some cases it really like Michael Sadler, who’s the lead singer for Saga is going to be there.
There’s a woman named Rachel Flowers, a blind keyboardist that she can play Emerson like in Palmer Focus. Wow. Just amazingly cool things and like find, you know what I mean? There’s some cases where that musical prodigy thing that comes from when you lose one sense, sometimes you gain, gain other Right, right.
Amazing superpowers. She’s just amazing. And so I get a chance to see not only Prague, but a little bit of Prague Fusion and a little bit of Prague metal and that kind of stuff. And that, that’ll be a big report after the, I think it’s the start of October that I’m going out there. Nice. And, and of course that’s one of those, like, Colleen likes it, but she doesn’t like the immersive.
Oh my God, you’re gonna hear 30 bands in three days kind of a thing. So I got an Airbnb that’s within reasonable thing. It’s gonna be like a seven hour drive to get there. It’s, it’s one of those places where in New Jersey where they’re having it is an okay neighborhood, but if you go the wrong direction, like two out of the four compass points, oh, you’re in a bad neighborhood.
So I have to, I gotta be careful about where I found my Airbnb. So it’s like, well that was a lot of good music, but my car is up on cinder blocks. That wasn’t convenient. Right. You know, I,
Stephen: you know, you, you mentioned talking there you said album and then you change it to cd and we talk about language and there’s an example of language changing because.
We grew up with an album being an lp you know, a record that’s this big. But now I, I think of album more as the, the collection of music, whether it’s an lp, a cd, or an MP three online album. Just true is the generic referral
Alan: for me. I revert back to album because of that, because nowadays when I talk about CDs, people are like, don’t you know about streaming?
Don’t you know that they’ve digitized this and you can just get it without having the physical thing of it,
Stephen: having a dementia attack there.
Alan: Yeah. Really. I just need to revert, you know, it, I, I’m happy to embrace new terms and, and sometimes things get retro nim where now it is the right collection, the right word for a collection of songs and that kind of thing.
Right. Yes. It, it, a quick complaint. I think it’s always amusing when, and I think this is like a, a background nim, you know, where they actually, I. They made up a nice word that they thought was the good connotation for if they wanted it to be. And then they figured out what letters it should stand, what, what, you know, each of those things should stand for.
So like scuba came not that way. It really came from self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Right? And then it was handed to just say scuba. And here’s another, you know if you will a smarty pet peeve. You know, if you don’t say it as a word, it’s not an acronym, it’s an abbreviation. Like when you say a t m, you don’t say it Adam.
You say a t m and therefore it’s an abbreviation or an initialization. When an acronym is only like for fubar, for scuba, for radar, those are things where the, the covid, you know what I mean? Covid isn’t a new word. It, it’s right. I don’t know what it stands for. How embarrassing is that? Yeah. But it, it’s, you know, the novel, new version of that particular strain of Right, right.
Infection, et cetera, et cetera. So, and I try not to be, I don’t, I’m not the guy that in conversation says, oh, caught you. ’cause I kind of hate those people too. You know what I mean? Really. And I’m determined to be right that you’re not gonna be friendly. You know what I mean
Stephen: with that. I’m machine. Well, you know, the M stands for machine you.
But that’s the example are you use your pin number, right? That’s the example though, how the, the acronym becomes the word, and that’s what we use to refer to. So in that context, saying a t m, which is technically accurate, doesn’t sound right to us. And we say a t m machine. And like you said, with scuba, it ha it’s an acronym.
We should put dots after every letter. But we don’t because we don’t, it’s become its own word now. And that’s right. That’s why you get people that are the, the wording grammar, Nazis like, oh, this is, like, this is like, it’s changing all the time and it’s not, you know. The, what was the, the, the language from back in the day, the Ebonics they were talking about and it wasn’t ask, it was acts and a lot of people say that and they got used to it.
And I believe it’s actually in the Urban dictionary now, which is unofficial. But you know, it shows people use it. Yeah, I
Alan: read there’s a whole book, but I read an excerpt, an article about it that people made fun, including me to a certain extent of Ebonics because there were certain things that like, it’s, it’s not a new creation, it’s a wrong version of the way that we regularly speak.
Like an artist named 50 cent. It’s like, you know, the plurals have an asked, right. It’s sense. It should be. And, and, and so I tease about that a little bit, but then you find out that the way in which languages develop and the way in which people talk, it isn’t a corruption of existing, it’s got roots in another way to say it.
So like acts is one of those examples. It’s, it has validity, not as the wrong way to say ask, but a, a, a, an acceptable cultural or ethnic way of saying, right, that. That’s just how they say it. And after you’ve had it around for 50 years and they didn’t like get back in here. Correct. That. It’s just accepted.
That’s how language is grow. That’s how
Stephen: it works. It branches out.
Alan: Exactly. And, and not only in spoken, but in print. Colleen and I talk about this often ’cause we are word geeks and we, and we love this kind of stuff. There’s a progression for like, for instance, what we just talked about, acronyms. Now often I see Nasdaq in print as just capital N A S D A Q.
And it’s like, well, you know that it once did stand for like North American stock, right? Another one that I should know. I’m sure that on Culture Quest, I’d be able to like dope it out as to quotation must be the queue, et cetera, et cetera. But when it first appeared it was Nasdaq with all dots, as you were saying.
Each of those is an abbreviation. And then it was just the, the six letters and now it’s actually been on all capitals. And so I’ve seen that for nasdaq, I’ve seen that for Covid, the Covid is now just capital C, right? Instead of all caps. And is it a particular newspaper? The New York Times, that is the leader in, okay, we’ve decided to un all caps it.
Now it’s just a word. And so you’ll see scuba, of course, as not even capital SS anymore. It’s just a word. It’s just scuba. Right. You know what I mean? Right. It’s not even attempting to show. And what happens then is because people get used to, oh, there must be an initialization or an abbreviation, et cetera, behind that, Mensa is one of those things that, what does that stand for?
It’s like actually it doesn’t stand for my ego needs stroking always, you know what I mean? Which I’ve seen some very funny proposals for what? That’s a good stand for background DIMMs, if you will. But actually it’s the Latin word for table, right, which was meant to know it’s a round table.
And I love this, but his, I love these language discussions. You also find out that menton means cafeteria in German. And so when you go over there, it’s like, oh yeah, we’re all just full of ourselves. We’re So, you mean fancy, like the place that sells sandwiches in plastic? You mean that with the like the, the air nets by the jello and air nets.
And also I think that it means like. Foolish woman in Spanish, like foolish older woman. And, and so it’s very funny, whenever you get that word that has multiple meanings across languages, you kind of can’t keep putting on airs. If you’re like, wow, I’m in Mensa. Oh, you’re a member of the Foolish Woman Club.
That’s, that’s not any good.
Stephen: We should have a parody logo instead of the table logo. Have the foolish woman logo as the parody.
Alan: Right. Right. It, I, I, I really, I love learning the background of those kinds of things, and I love learning how they, they’re available and they all, like, whenever Colleen and like, I don’t know is it Oxford English dictionary declares, like, these are the words of the year where like some things that didn’t exist before.
So for instance, Homer Simpson has contributed. No, don’t, don’t. That was one that really like, kind of bothered Colleen because it didn’t exist before and it’s, it’s. I guess useful, it’s useful in that context of like, it could be that you, we used to say, oops, or Right, my bad, or, you know, oh, that kind of stuff.
And the the Simpsons. So let’s see. They contribute ambient. That ambients a man, it didn’t exist before. Some writer for the Simpsons said, you know, we, we need a word that, that is how people get all puffed up or how they so ambient. And also rom rouls another one of those things. It’s like, well, what does that even mean?
Apparently whatever you want it to, ’cause it’s a made up word for the Simpsons. And from context, of course, you can try to figure out what it meant to them. It when, when people talk about language and they’ll say, well, you know, every word is kind of made up way long ago when language was first proto language.
You can kind of tell that many things were on AIC that they sounded like what was going on. So club or you know, something that has the, the right a connotation and that it has the denotation of, it’s a, a whomping device. But I think that that’s true for many, many words that we don’t. Oh, yeah. Kind of narrow it on and out, Pia, to be a very direct thing.
Like buzz is the sound that bees make or something. But many, many words sound just like what they should. If you were trying to come up with a word that made lightning. It’s very sharp and quick or, and, and I’m all over the place today. Monty Python once had a, a, a skit. But if you know where they talked about, well that’s a very woody word, you know, born off and recidivist.
It’s very tinny recidivist. And, and they just made fun of like the mouth feel, the mouth sound of various different words. And that’s probably what first got me thinking about. A lot of words are like that, that they didn’t upper in the skits, you know,
Stephen: they describe Yeah. And, and you know, the English we’re horrible about pronouncing other languages, so we’ll get a word and we don’t hear it or say it quite correct.
And then a hundred years later, we’ve got a whole new word that came from that. But it’s spelled different and sounds different, you know?
Alan: That’s right. Some things are direct lifts. You know, I, there’s, it’s kind of funny, I’m, I’m there’s a quote along the lines of, you know, English is the language that follows other languages down the alley and knocks ’em out and then rifles through their pockets.
You know what I mean? Yeah. We have you know, kindergarten is very accepted in English, of course. Very German word. Yes. And like g there’s a, and you can kind of go language by language. Well, there wasn’t a better word than I don’t know. We haven’t adopted Bonjour for Hello? But is hello? Only English.
I’m trying to think of like, yo-yo comes from the Polynesian, you know? Right. There are kinds of things that just. We talk about in Scrabble words, the reason that a lot of words are valid in Scrabble is because they’re words for a plant or an instrument or a coin where there really isn’t an English equivalent.
It never got translated. But when you say real, it’s like that’s what that coin is called. And so it had to be adopted into the dictionary because now enough people are using that Right. And bot and things like that. Whereas other things, somehow they carry the foreign distinction with them and you’re not allowed to use it.
And is it just about popularity contest that not enough people are using that because the country’s not big enough?
Stephen: Because the letters that form that word made a super PAC and they were able to pay off the dictionary people so they could bump out the other words. Right.
Alan: And one thing that’s very handy if you’re a Scrabble player is that you know, you’re not only looking for words, you’re often looking for.
English standards for what would be useful as parts. So you’re looking for Ed endings or er, or i n g and, and the various different phone names and gers and, and you know, everybody. It’s kind of funny. I think I could define a lot of those things, but I’m not sure anymore. Right, right. Yeah, me too. I’ve said that some words look odd because it’s a foreign language and like, you know, bot is.
Is it h a t or a h t And you’re like, well, if I spelled this wrong, will they even know? Because it’s not common. And, and sometimes it might even be, well, maybe it’s acceptable that this is the Laos version and this is the version, or whatever else it might be. Right? They actually play like that. There’s some things that are just, they’re not firm, they’re kind of floaty.
There’s all kinds of cool memes about, like, tour is a Rocky Hill in, in, in England, Scotland, et cetera. Maybe Ireland I should know because they’d be happy to tell me just how wrong I am. That’s no squish, you know, it’s like, but having said that, then you find out that this is called you know Exactly in that way, the Welsh word for hill.
And then they called it tour because it was on the border. So you find out that what it really means is Hill. Hill. You know what I mean? Right. I know I’ve read an example where it’s kinda like every time that you have explorers go into the Inuit culture and then they find out that that wasn’t the word for snow, that was the word for the animal on the snow that they were pointing to.
And so, you know what I mean? So Right. All these interesting mistranslations and adoptions, and like you said, they kind of morph over time too, so, I, I often say English is like the Swiss Army knife of languages, which is itself a Swiss army knife appropriation, if you will. Right.
Stephen: And, and one of the things with like writing, you’ll get editors or other reader, you know, other authors, readers that will rip things apart, like idioms are sometimes the worst.
We’re very, you know, when you read, you says he locked his gaze on that person. Right. And, and you know, we understand what that means. We use it, it it, it conveys what we want. But then you get the editor says, well, how do they do that? He can’t lock, lock his eyes. He can’t lock his eyes on he pulling ’em out and putting ’em on there.
It’s like, no, we use this all the time when we understand the meaning of it, that, you know, move on. But there’s so many writers and editors that it’s like, no, you must change that because it physically is impossible.
Alan: Right. Okay. His gaze. How does, that might be more common, but that doesn’t make any more sense than lock Disney.
Exactly.
Stephen: Et cetera. So, so, you know, I’ve had a couple people call out a few things like that, but then I like read the exact same, you know, a wording choice in Dean Kuntz or Stephen King. So I’m like, if they can do it, I can do it.
Alan: Exactly. I, I, as you know, I’m, I’m really playful with language. I am often verbing nouns and just using things in, in a kind of a semi wrong way, because it’s funny to do that.
It brings along emotion and tension because of the wrongness and whatever else it might be. And I, I don’t do that ’cause I’m a fool. I really do know what I should be using, but I’m bored with using the same word over again. Yes. If I write a paragraph and I’m using the same word, if you will, the same meaning, I’ll still have three different words for it because I don’t wanna repeat.
Revolver. Revolver. Revolver. No, it’s revolver and pistol and gun and repeater and all the gas, whatever the things I can come up with. And it’s funny, I’m not sitting there with my thesaurus open so that I can do that in an artificial way. It just, I have a big vocabulary, I guess, and it occurs to me that to be more interesting to use that as a way of of playing with it, I guess.
Yeah. I don’t have to repeat myself sometimes than when you choose repetition. It’s more powerful because it’s kinda like, there was no better way to say he hit him and he hit him and he hit him. You know what I mean? If you did it, he hit him and he punched him, and, and it wouldn’t have the same thing’s.
Just the repetition is what you get of where he just pounded the guy. Right. And that’s what you’re going for is the effect of it, the connotation as well as the denotation. I. I’m willing to bet that for almost all the things, maybe with an editor or just somebody reading it, that if they were to ask me why I did that, I’d be able to say either subconsciously or quite consciously, I did it because of this.
I wanted it to be the long version here, and then the short version here, this was leading into it. And then you want the punchy version when it’s the punchy part of the paragraph. Yeah. Et cetera,
Stephen: et it. It’s like if I say, oh, how did I fix that? Oh, I MacGyver it. We know what that means. I add ed to the end of lots of words, and you get people like, You.
That’s not a normal way of using that word with Ed. I’m Mike, but you totally know what it is. And there’s a podcast I listened to called Grammar Girl that talks about that type of stuff Yeah. And how people can use these. And even though it’s not in the dictionary, not an accepted form of that word, but it fits and we know what it means.
Or it may even be more accurate than the way we actually use it. Like left and leaked.
Alan: It’s fixing in a very like, ingenious way. Yeah. Like would’ve, you know what I mean? Yeah. Outta of a, a, a straw and a paradise. He managed to make a nuclear reactor.
Stephen: You need bubblegum for that. There we go. The, the one example leap.
Exactly. Yeah. Lup and Leap. Yeah. The one example I remember on her podcast was A kid that didn’t understand yesterday, so they would say last day, well actually that makes a lot more sense than yesterday. So that kid’s and my mom always tells the story. When we were young, we’d go to the local drive-in and I’m like, but why do we call to drive-in?
Because it’s outside. It’s a drive out. Well, that makes more sense.
Alan: Exactly. That’s funny. At least they’re both equally valid. And it’s only whichever one caught on first or whichever one first put like, you know, we know this is the truth. Some places have or the word becomes it’s called an eponine, right?
Where aspirin wasn’t always called aspirin with a small a, it was a brand name right? In, in the United States at least and much of the world, you have to defend your trademark and your patent and your brand name by not letting other people use it. So there’s all kinds of things in English that were once cellophane, aspirin, Kleen Xerox, exactly.
That. They were once a very specific, this company makes this thing. And then when it caught on and everybody just started to refer to Kleenex as Kleenex, in some cases, they really fought it. And in other cases was, wow, we are so popular in the market that all Kleenex are now Kleenexes. Kleenexes as Colleen would correct me too.
Stephen: There. There you go. That’s a great guys.
Alan: So Colleen and I, we make fun of that then when you know that that’s what happens, like indexes, indices, and I know that I’ve said things like He’s wearing multiple pieces of latex. So those are all laies but not lattice and you know what I mean? We, we play with the English language is great for it.
There are some patterns and there are some patterns that get broken and sometimes for a reason and sometimes out of laziness. But if that’s the thing that gets adopted, then it, it just is, you can fight for the purity of the language. And from what I understand, the French government actually has a department where they try to maintain that the purity of the French language don’t wanna adopt foreign terms or have French terms corrupted and stuff like that.
But, and English, I think that the librarians and the teachers might try to have it be that kids don’t get it wrong. You know, the first time you use. Despicable. It, it, it’s like, well the cartoons corrupted that from it’s depo, so it should be despicable, not despicable. And yet if you got let’s see, was it Celeste or Bugs Bunny, whoever it was.
You know, saying that once it’s in a hundred million minds, ’cause they saw the cartoon, there’s no going back. Right, right. Bute’s Comet is Haley’s Comet because somebody famous said Haley’s and then forever after it’s Haley’s, it just is. When I say Hallie’s Comet, they gimme a look. Like, do
Stephen: you know, are we talking about the same thing right, what you’re talking about?
Yeah, I’m going with the original. That guy
Alan: pronounce his name Halle. And so should be how you say his name
Stephen: right. Sometimes it just depends on the region you’re in because different regions will pronounce it different and that doesn’t invalidate either pronunciation, but like, okay, the the big one that around here that has caused arguments is Neanderthal or Neanderthal.
Collin will jump down your throat and correct you all day long if you see Neanderthal. So of course I refuse to say Neander tall. I will say Neanderthal 500 times in a row just ’cause he gets so worked up about it and I looked it up and found that. Neanderthal is actually accurate. There’s just some areas and regions that say Neander tall.
And it just so happens when he was into the ian zoology and where that was centered, that region used Neander tall. So that’s the way they always referred to it. But it doesn’t invalidate the, and he will not accept that to him. It’s neander tall and it’s wrong and orangutan and Oranga orangutan, you know, and Right, right.
You know, and he’ll correct you on that one all day long. Yeah. And I, I’ll just say it the opposite way ’cause I really don’t care. But most people know what an orangutan is, but orangutan, they’re like, what? So Right. It,
Alan: it, there are so many of those and it, and it let’s, I, I, I have a, a friend in Mensa that often, like when I’m making a joke, they correct my stuff and it’s like, I really do know better.
I, I just, I’m playing with words and that kind of stuff, but you know what, now that I’ve had to explain it, you spoiled the joke. Yeah. You know what I mean? It, it, it’s, it’s funny there, that instinct of being the person to correct, being the, the one that knows the language better, it’s very strong in some people.
And I hope that, I really do know a lot of words. I remember taking some kind of vocabulary test that said the eng, most people know about 30,000 words. That seems like a huge number, but, but it’s not, it, the English language is big. And I, I knew something extrapolating from all the various different things.
I knew that I had like 10 times that 300,000 words. I’m like, can that be, ’cause I don’t know every medical term and every, I, I, I can’t believe that kind of. But when I play with language like that, like I said, I, it’s so easy for me to make puns or multiple uses in a paragraph or something because I really don’t have a problem with.
Coming up with alternate versions of various different things, they just kind of flow outta me, whatever little filing system I’ve got. It sparks, oh, you know, thi this isn’t only a cup, this is also a, a schooner or an you know, and you go up and down as to is it a matter of color? Is it a matter of size?
Is it a u ’cause then it’s a pitcher. Is it, you know, a right, like a mug. ’cause it’s got coffee and is it only a mug if it’s got hot beverages in it? Can you have, when you can have a mug of beer? So it’s not a matter of temperature. And then as you even talk about it, you can say, well, that’s why I choose the thing I do.
Because many things have connotation as well as denotation. And many things you choose just the opposite, because it’ll be funny to say, right, ordinarily what I would call the cup, you put an ice, like, I don’t know, what do you put an ice cream in? I guess it’s a bowl or it’s a, a parfait glass or something like that.
You know what I mean? You, and so it, it’s. Fun to me to think of Exactly. There’s so many ways to approach this and almost all my choices are like quick but deliberate. They’re not that I, I, I’m sure I make mistakes. I’m not full of myself like that either. I regularly get words wrong because the first way you heard it is the way you think it is, and then you find out that, nope, it’s bigger than that, or it’s mispronounced
Stephen: or you read it before hearing it.
Alan: Exactly. That, that’s a a, a standard, like a Mensa meme is don’t crack on people that, that say something wrong. It’s because. They, they internalized it first as a letter sequence, not as the spoken
Stephen: word. Right. And, and we quite often do not pronounce things phonetically the way they look that we’ve learned.
And there That’s right. There are more exceptions to rules than rules. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s funny, I was laughing because the first, I had a writing coach for a while and we didn’t click. Part of it probably was large. Part of it was probably, I was just too newbie to understand a writing coach and what the benefits.
So I, I won’t say the person was horrible, but we didn’t click. And one of the first things I remember that irritated me and turned me off, but I understand better now, is quit using such large vocabulary, just write for common people. And I write like you would talk and I’m like, I, I am writing. Like I would talk and I’m like, what are you talking about?
I don’t, you know, and, and just some discussion. I started realizing like, okay, well. I need to change my thinking. So, ’cause I’m writing for like other mens, it’s just the way I talk and write. Mm-hmm. But I need to write for the common third and fourth grader. That’s huge and hard to
Alan: do. You know what’s interesting?
Many of the things that I talk about, like comic books and mad magazine, computer programming, I have, I have, you know, a dozen different topics that I’m, I’m pretty good about. But a lot of those things, it’s already a rarefied atmosphere. I’m not talking about baseball where the common man is really much more the, the owner of baseball than the, the big vocabulary guy.
And so I I don’t know that I toned down my vocabulary a lot because if you’re reading comic books, you’ve already seen. Mutant adamantium. You know what I mean? Right. There’s all these things that are, that are in comic books that are like the references to mythology. The reference is there’s, there’s already a kind of a, a higher level of atmosphere.
Very poorly said. And I’m, it’s kind of funny as I say that, it’s like, okay, wouldn’t that just be the stratosphere, the phe? But, you know, I mean it’s, so, it’s, it’s I like the fact that by sometimes you do betray yourself. Remember long ago, Dennis Miller was gonna be on Monday night Football and most.
Sports announcers are pretty much every men, and they make references to, you know, hey, gave him a good shot there and stuff like that. And then Dennis Miller would say, yeah, he gave him a shot like IGA Memon gave at the battle of, and like everybody in the booth would just kinda like a look at him and, you know, you’re, he’s so smart and has such a command of all those different kinds of references, but they would tease him about, you know, this is just football.
It doesn’t have to be, this is the literary excursion that we’re gonna go on to figure out what the hell you just said. So that’s funny. Once in a while I’m aware that I’m kind of a fish outta water with I I oh boy. We’ll be like a family gathering. And, and both of our families are very bright, but they don’t have my specific knowledge.
And when you, in every way and when you use a word that’s too far afield of every man knowledge, they they get it most of the time ’cause they’re smart. But they’ll tease you about, you know, may, maybe you could like take that high hat off a little bit and it’d be like, well, I figure if I do this, I’ll just be weird Uncle Al to the kids and they’ll find out that speaking well and speaking with big words is just fine.
I’m not an alien. I’m not, I’m not, you know, someone who’s putting on airs. I’m hearing my, my, my lumberjack shirt and my jeans, and yet I’m using, you know, despicable or something like that. It it, it’s a common word.
Stephen: That’s right, exactly. I get that at work all the time. I’m always being told, okay, that’s great, but could you like explain it in English for the rest of us in common language?
I’m like, I, I did. And they’re like, no, can you simplify it? I’m like, how do you simplify it? That’s as simple as it gets, you know? It, it, so I, I run into that brick wall quite often. Another
Alan: thing that I, that this really has happened, like in real life, you know, you play a game like categories where it’s like, okay, it’s gotta be a certain kind of thing, starting with a letter.
And not to be weird, but there’s hardly ever one. You know what I mean? If you get the letter C for a color, It’s like, well, so maybe the first one that might come to people’s mind is Crimson, but how about chartreuse and how about Coral and how about, and I can start spitting ’em out. And so at one point we had a, a thing where it was like, you know, name a Flightless bird.
And I said, ostrich. And they said penguin. And it was like both valid choices, right? Nope. Penguin, is it Penguin Is the flight, the death, what everybody should say for flight, this bird? It’s like, but, but I, I said a really valid one. Why would you think there’s only one? Or what about ego is like that?
There’s odo kind of homeless birds.
Stephen: Exactly. Even though it’s extinct,
Alan: right? Why is it extinct? Because they couldn’t get away from the crazy hunters that came to his Right. So, so, and it’s kind of funny, I, I don’t mean to tease, pick on anybody in particular, but that mindset that thinks that there’s only one, or that the first thing that came to mind, the first thing that they learned is the only thing, it’s, it’s off-putting to them to be like, and maybe some people just don’t harbor disagreement, you know what I mean?
Like, it, it, this is a particular game where you’re trying to match. It really does matter that you’re trying to get on each other’s wavelengths. And, and I’m aware that I’m really not on most people’s wavelengths. I really was in that game as the game went on trying to not say the first thing that came to my mind, but.
Try to say the first thing that I thought would come to their mind. Right. And, and I, I don’t know that I succeeded any better. You know what I mean? When I’m, because then it’s like, well, so I’m trying to think of the one with, I don’t wanna insult them. It’s not the one with the least letters. It’s not the one that was on a, a cartoon instead of a nature program.
It’s none of those things. And yet, kind of trying to be in somebody else’s mind. I am an empathetic person, but I don’t know that I’m a mind reader in that way. I really say and do what I want and hope that we’ll make a connection. And you and I have talked about this part of do you make a connection is how I know who my friends are going to be, right.
Who it’s going to be friends with instead of, well, I dumbed myself down and then I became everybody’s friend. But now I have to be the dumb version of me whenever we’re together. That’s not fair.
Stephen: It’s just not right. You
Alan: know what I mean? Right. Vincents are, again, not only everybody, it’s about I. Jargon is one of the things that people in various different fields use to create a bond of.
Like, this is insider knowledge. Policemen use different words than the regular public does. So do artists, so do rock and rollers, et cetera, et cetera. And so when you, so my younger brother still has all kinds of army words that he uses because he projects that out into the world. And that way when someone knows what Strac is, you know, that they have army experience and there’s a bond created.
Right. You know what I mean? So I guess in men
Stephen: it’s like, it it’s part of your identity. Absolutely.
Alan: And, and in, in sending out, you know, I like dealing with. Well-read people or smarty people or odd people. And so if I make that odd science fiction reference or Monty Python reference or whatever else it might be, I think of people like Monty Python, we’re gonna get along just fine.
That really is one of those things that the sense of humor and the wit of it and the right, the, the journey of it, all those things work for me. And if it works for them too, we’re gonna be okay.
Stephen: Which, which by the way flying Circus is on H B o Max, which is now just Max.
Alan: So man, if you want to get the best half hours of laughing your butt off comedy, it’s that.
Yeah, I don’t think anything has ever matched it. I love Kids in the Hall. I love Oh yeah. The states I love young Citizens, no Upright Citizens Brigade, and yet Man Monte
Stephen: Python had
Alan: such six people, such brilliant writers and brilliant performers,
Stephen: and the interplay between them
Alan: and just. They’re amazingly good.
They were so consistent for at least three seasons. I think the fourth season was a little bit worse because Cle left. Yeah. And he’s, he, he was a, the only good guy driving, driving force. He’s part of the troop. If you’ll but boy, such
Stephen: good stuff. You know, it, it interesting you made, you made me think of Monty Python and what you just said because we’ve talked a lot about comedy.
You see a lot of comedy. I, you know we both like it and we’ve. One of the things you said made me think of Big Bang Theory because one of the things Sheldon quite often did, he would ask a question and they’d be like, oh this and Oh, that Flightless Bird’s voice. He says, no, the correct answer is this.
And that’s the ultimate and do not argue and everyone just shuts up ’cause of his personality now. Right, and and it’s funny and it points out in comedy form that style of person, but. Man, there are so many, especially Mansons Colin’s that way too, that they’ll say, oh, I hate that show because they’re always making fun of the, the guy with autism and they don’t portray autism.
I’m like, okay. But it’s comedy and Big Bang Theory did so much for bringing to, to Light Nerd and geekdom and making it more comfortable. And I think the millennials being able to cosplay and talk about this and enjoy games on their phones has a lot to do with Big Bang Theory. And people could argue this, but I will stick to that hill that its comedy for one.
Number two. No matter how much fun they’re poking at, it’s no different than any other comedy. And three, what it really shows deep down is this is a group of family that was not family. They’re brought together by their, their geekdom and their smarts. Exactly. They’re
Alan: in the school that specializes in geeks.
They’re their jobs are along those lines. Exactly.
Stephen: Yeah. And I think people have the wrong perspective sometimes. You know, I don’t mention Big Bang Theory at Mensa very often ’cause there’s too many that wanna jump on you. Why do you like that? They’re like, seriously chill out folks. I mean, come on.
Alan: Right.
It honestly, it is a good example of they made fun, but they had gentle rib and they also got, you got insights into That’s really what Quotes, those kinds of people find funny. That’s how they talk. That that’s, and, and I don’t know, deal with it, but I, I think I mentioned, you know, we went to the ag and this was the topic, what we talked about a couple weeks ago, maybe just last week.
And part of it was the colloquium, it’s the focus gathering that MENSA does, where they talk about like a single large issue right before the AG kicks off. And this year was about neuro neurodiversity and there’s a big Venn diagram crossover with Mensa over the people that have maybe A D H D or Asperger’s or autism.
And having said that those aren’t a lot of the conference was it’s not only a medical condition listed in the DSM five, it’s not only a a problem, it’s that there’s a superpower involved there. That ability to focus or that being passionate about what you love and, and not caring about what do the people think of your passion.
That’s very much a part of many of my comic. The comic book world is kind of odd to lots of other people, but if you’re in the comic book world, it’s great to see a good cosplay. It’s great to get into a great discussion about the whole history of the Avengers and how the M c u version of the Avengers does not always match the comic book version, but then the multiverse made it so that, well, they’re all equally valid because there are all these various different dimensions and, and that it’s, I love, I, I have often talked about, the reason I love going to annual gatherings is because to hear someone who’s really bright on a topic and passionate about it is intoxicating.
It’s very cool for people to take the. The governor’s off and just say, I love nesting dolls. I got a hundred different sets and I’m gonna tell you why they’re cool and why this is my favorite one. And you know, and they’re called like,
Stephen: Patricia. I thought it was Maka.
Alan: Or Maka. Thank you. It’s kind of funny.
Yeah. I don’t always get it right, but I know it’s something like that. It’s close. Yeah, same here. Exactly. The go and, and I just, whatever that thing is, once in a while you can see that people tip a little bit over into obsession or that it’s debilitating or that it’s, you know, yeah. Your passion is it’s obvious and it’s commendable, but hey, if it’s wrecking the rest of your life, Maybe you shouldn’t care only about nesting dolls.
Maybe you, you should be able to say, I have enough money that I’ll be able to continue buying them instead of, I kind of screwed up all I had. Right.
Stephen: I lost my
Alan: wife because I would, I want one too many sets or whatever. You know what I mean?
Stephen: I would love to talk to some sociologists about their thoughts, and I’m sure they’re split on it.
Mm-hmm. That the current acceptance and understanding of people on the spectrum and the diversity has a lot to do with Sheldon being in the forefront for 12 years. I, I, I would love to get some thoughts and opinions on that. And speaking of, okay, so we had an RG meeting the other night for the upcoming Western Pennsylvania rg and I was talking about the author panel that I’m going to be holding and I mentioned Bill and Robert said, oh, we’ve got some new people that have never even met Bill.
You know, so Bill’s blah, blah, blah. And this guy goes, oh, He just read, he writes Space opera. I’m like, well, no, actually it’s military sci-fi. That’s a different genre. They, they really focused on different things. He’s like, that’s just your term for it. Okay. I wanna talk to you about this at the rg because you, not to, not to get my high horse or anything, but you definitely need some education on this because they are not the same.
People do not read them the same and he just would not accept it. And I’m like, well, that’s a typical MENSA trait there. Nope. I know it. And this is all there is. But, but not all people are like that. You get lots of that are open. It’s like, oh, well I understand that now and I didn’t see that or whatever before, you know, so.
Right.
Alan: It. I, I, I, it’s kind of funny, there’s all kinds of facets to that discussion, Alina and I just laughed about. There’s a famous quote from me, a mathematician or physicist that said that’s so stupid. It’s not even wrong. That in order to be able to even talk about what’s wrong with it, it has to be, is that like in science, it’s whether it’s can be proven or not, right?
Is there an experiment you could design to say whether that works out or not? And there really are, some people say such odd things, non-sequitur, or like, it just doesn’t follow what you’re saying. Like from, from science, from experience, from anything that, like you don’t make it, whether it’s falsifiable, verifiable, it’s, and, and.
And we see that, oh my God, all the time from the Freedom Caucus or any number of people that, that, why do they keep putting a microphone in front of some people’s faces? It’s obvious that they’re not well, they don’t have a working brain. They’re not even making the attempt to have what they say makes sense.
So many things are word salad. They’re off the top of their head. They contradict themself within
Stephen: their own paragraph. And, and if anybody listening needs examples, it’s very easy. Just go read the political news of the day. There will be enough examples on there that you’ll understand what we’re saying.
Exactly.
Alan: And I like a columnist named Jeff Edrich and he’s, I guess he’s an online columnist. I don’t know where he is in print, but he’s kind of funny. He’s hilariously vulgar, so it puts some people off. But he is really good at pointing out. Like he has a, his Friday, if I remember correct, maybe his Saturday is this weekend stupid, and he just goes through and says, look at what some people are saying.
And these are people that. They’re one step away from nuclear codes. They’re one step away from like the, the Supreme Court decisions
Stephen: that are making how we run this country. You can’t believe the ridiculous things that they’re saying and doing.
Alan: How, how are we allowing ourselves to be, like, what I’ve heard it called crapo.
You know what I mean? There’s all kinds of democracy or kleptocracy or whatever that really we’re gonna be run by the most stupid, the most uncaring in trying to get to facts to try to even make what they say from one moment to the next, hang together. Aren’t you tired of that? Foolishness and that hypocrisy and that the boldness with which they present the crap that they’re slinging, it’s disgusting.
And yet there’s a certain portion of the population like, that’s my guy. I love the fact that he speaks truth to power. You don’t know what you’re saying. You found that quote somewhere laying on the ground and you picked it up, and that’s the noble club that you now wield. Even though it’s nothing like that, he never punches up.
He punches down. She never says the truth. She couldn’t care less about fighting out. It’s, it’s ridiculous how bad it has gotten if you’re at all that says, man, I’m used to statesmen. It used to be when they had a press conference, that person had, like the whole country should hear, and that’s why we’re having a State of the Union address or something like that.
That hasn’t been true with any number of presidents we’ve had. Oh my God. To listen to Trump babble or listen to Bush read, like right off the
Stephen: teleprompter, but he didn’t even
Alan: know some of the words that he was trying to say. You know what I mean? He has kind of gotten better as he’s been an ex-president because it’s been shown that maybe he does have some compassion and some art in him.
Even though when he was president, he’s the guy that had silly nicknames for everybody. He’s the guy that was continually being run by a whole bunch of behind the scenes people and, and did terrible things for the country. Eight years of Bush compared to eight years of Gore, which we might’ve had if we hadn’t had the first ridiculous over by overstep by the Supreme Court in saying, Nope, hang in.
Chad’s nope. We declare this guy president. It’s, I don’t think it’s still in my cr, it’s just is. Yeah. And yet it’s a terrible exercise to think of, what if the world hadn’t gone into climate crisis because Gore would’ve been president and we wouldn’t have done. The evil things we’ve done, and I really mean evil with not like having still a debate about fossil fuels, not listening to the thousand scientists listening to the one that was paid off to disagree, et cetera, et cetera.
Right? Imagine the better relations we would’ve had with other countries the way we would’ve not left. Like we wouldn’t have piled up to dictators and despots. We would’ve said Democracy is good. The rule of law is good. Let’s keep having that be what spreads in the world. I know this is like, we were just laughing a moment ago.
This is taking such a big turn. But like those kinds of alternate histories that you’ll read about from Harry Turtledove and others, it’s sometimes like terrible to think about what if the Nazis had won the war? What if the Civil War had gone the other way? What if steam power was invented earlier so that we had the industrial revolution all the earlier?
It’s interesting to talk about the extrapolations of one little event, one person, et cetera, et cetera. What if Tesla had won the battle instead of Addison or whatever, that the world really could have changed and in many cases for the better. The horrible, terrible interregnum, awful times. You know, the, what is it, the grand I I, I’ll mix amongst terms.
They really have names for the golden age versus like the dark ages and sometimes it really was this guy got assassinated and that was World War I, right? Right. History can change in a terrible way as well as a wonderful way. I’m hoping that now all the things we’re discovering with better energy sources better ai, et cetera, et cetera, that’s gonna usher in a age we will be able to.
Higher productivity and more safety and, and, you know better cybersecurity. It’s the way I’m investing. You know, we can talk about, hey, my, my reinvestments are recovering because all those good betts that I made that the world had to turn away with when Trump was in office and when Covid was happening, all that kind of stuff, the world might be actually waking up and saying, you know, what’s a good idea?
Medical technology that cures cancer? How about
Stephen: that? That’s a, that’s crazy. Great idea. Exactly. So when we’re talking about Big Bang Theory and the comedy and how it pokes fun at the real world and stuff, right? And I know we got SS n L, but why don’t we have a half hour scripted comedy show? That’s politicians.
I mean, they could have a, they not had
Alan: that, you know, Madam President Right. In the past. Yeah. Right, right, right. And and maybe not currently. You’re right that we need something that. That takes the air out of the worst of the people and it’s gonna, you wouldn’t have to make anything up. No. Recite what they just said as a comedy show and people will be like rolling their eyes or what a what an idiot, this guy.
Stephen: Right. Et cetera. So, alright, well, hey, I hate to cut this short. I have a meeting to get to here in a couple minutes, so No worries. I’m,
Alan: I’m, I know you’re very busy these last couple weeks and you know what’s good? Money, employment being the great consultant that you are Yeah. Says the, that’s the cool
Stephen: thing, says the me and my wife are retired and traveling all over the freaking place.
Yeah. Rub it in. Thanks. I appreciate it. Well,
Alan: it’s in brief. Hey, everyone who’s listening, retirement doesn’t just like happen If you really deny yourself in that one marshmallow versus two marshmallows way and be careful and invest and, and like never develop expensive habits. Colleen and I don’t have any addictions.
Like gotta get the finest wine, gotta get, you know what I mean? We are not, we’re not addicted to cigarettes nor any number of other vice. What’s our biggest thing? She likes coffee. I like Doc Dr. Pepper. That’s still available for like dollars, not 10 hundreds of thousands of dollars. We can hop in our gas sipping car and drive down to Johanna and go to the Herb Center.
I know you gotta go. I think that we have kind of earned our retirement by being careful about saving up till now. And unless we have a disaster, you know, our bank goes south, totally, my health goes south, whatever else it might be, I think we’ll be okay. And even then, the things that we’re doing are like, I don’t wanna buy an island, I just wanna go to like all the zoos in America.
I, you know, I just made a big spreadsheet of zoos and museums and art galleries and that’s gonna be the kind of thing that we do next is, Go to those places that we nice to do yet. So nice. Have fun, Stephen. Always a pleasure. Alright, talk to you later man. Something off our long list. Next time. Did we get
Stephen: anything today?
Secret invasion, I think. Exactly.
Alan: Oh, it’s terrible. That’s my, that’s my two word. It’s so bad comparison to how good things have been, but we’ll talk about that next. We’ll talk
Stephen: more later. Alright. Talk to you.
