A Geek History of Time - Episode 63 - Far Side of Absurd Government Part I

Episode Date: July 11, 2020

The World Disney Yes, beloved, beloved figure of our pop culture. That's how they get you. And out of Yada, she eventually causes her own husband to be born to death. And that makes me so happy on cold nights. Especially in and badly for the idiot Pecker Woods.

You have a bottle of scotch. Okay, that's twice that he's mentioned redheads. It is un-American to get in the way of our freedom to restrict people's freedom. That was the part I know plenty about this thing. I love me some Bobby Drake. Well, if that's all we've got then we're being really lazy. Yeah. Y'all bone.

You can literally poke a hole in it as soon as someone gets pneumonia. Well, I'm not as old as you. Well, ha ha mother fucker, I got a wizard. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect Mercury to the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I'm a history teacher. Currently on contractual unemployment until August. I'm here in Northern California and you may on my

end of this recording. You may hear noise in the background that is a fan blowing right now because every year the air conditioning in my apartment goes out during the summer and this is apparently the weekend during which that's gonna happen this year So I'm going to apologize to all of you ahead of time for the steady droning you may or may not pick up in the background and Now that I've said that who the heck are you sir on the other end of this virtual connection? I am Damien Harmony. I am a Latin teacher also on forced unemployment layoff status. So for the two months that everybody thinks that we just get off for free. No, we just stretch 12 months or 10 months of pay over 12. So it's like

silly putty, it sags in the middle. I don't have air conditioning issues, thankfully. But you might hear my dog getting up and necessitating a quick break as he is starting to get more active at night, which is actually kind of a good thing. So, yeah. I'm glad to hear it. Yeah, hey, I have a question for you. Oh, okay.

What was your favorite comic in the comic strips and the funny pages growing up? Oh man. Besides Mark Trail. Well, yeah, I mean, I've done obviously Mark Trail. Oh man, I like the bunch of them. Now, you know, I mean, it'll depend on kind of what phase of life you're talking about. Because by the time I got, when I was in college and then immediately post college, I was a really big fan of ZIT. I'm going to say because it was a good pre puberty. Preot. Oh, wow. All right.

Well, I'm enough of a basic bitch that, that like as a, as a kid, I thought Garfield was hysterically funny. I'm ashamed of myself to admit that now, but my kid, my son is super in a Garfield too. So, okay, I've guided him toward others quite honestly. Well, because you're a man of actual taste and distinction. So yeah. So yeah, and you know, I was a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes and I had a soft spot in my heart. I always got a kick out of as a nerd Particularly I was gonna kick out of the far side and Bloom County Bloom County, I love Bloom County. I didn't get the thing is a kid. I didn't get any of the political stuff.

Sure. Because all that kind of went over my head. I just thought it was like way out there and like weird and crazy and funny. Uh-huh. And then as an adult, I went back and wrote a bunch of it and like, wow, Steve Dallas is a prick. Like, like, oh my God.

OK. So yeah, but those would be the big ones. Well, it's funny that you would bring up the far side, because that's what we're here to talk about today. Oh, awesome. Yeah. And it's this episode is titled The Far Side of Observed Governments.

Oh, okay. I think the piece is in the title. Pointy. And it's here. All right. Yeah. So down for it. Oh, okay, I think that he's in the title pointy. Yeah, so down for it. On Christmas Eve, 2019, the far side finally stepped into the digital world. The website opened and just shy of 25 years after Gary Larsen's final column, final cartoon, calling it quits.

And everyone from Gen X likely rejoiced, said to him of their favorite captions, and then tried to push a door that said, pull or put on socks and run around a kitchen table. Wax and wolves were optional. Yeah. I know. Yeah. No, no, wax and wolves are not optional. No, I'm sorry. No. I have said for years that the far side absolutely lends itself to a mobile app and I would gladly pay, you know, a buck 99 a month subscription. No one has heard me yet. Unfortunately, I think it's a wonderful way for Gary Larson

to get passive income on property he's already created. But I gotta tell you, I'd pay more than a buck 99. Like, yeah, I totally get what you're saying. And I totally agree. I think you're lowballing, which is a great negotiation tactic. I'm not gonna lie. But, and also I have all of the far sides at home, like the entire treasury.

So I would only pay a book now. I did that. Yeah, okay. Because I'd have it with me. Growing up, I loved the far side. I used to sit there with the books that my mom and dad had, and they were like these long ways books. They were only the height was only roughly that of a panel.

And I would just pour through them. And some of them were over my head. Other ones less so, but they were all very familiar to me. Rounded people, anthropomorphized animals, a single panel, self-contained, simple little absurd comics. And there was literally nothing like them. You had Marba Duke and Family Circus as single panels, but they were boring as shit. Tell us what you really shit did and don't hold back. Don't sugar coated.

Yeah. BC and Garfield were quickly waning in humor by the time I hit about eight. The lock horns were basically the same abuse of joke over and over again. Kelvin and Hobbes was wonderful and subtle and clever, but it was long and it relied too much on knowing what had already happened. For better or for worse, had the same problem and it was even less subversive than Calvin and Hobbes was. Kathy and Dune'sbury were way over my head way too far and fuck Mark Trail. If I see him, I'm gonna kick his ass off the goddamn mountain. And for what it's worth, Sally Worth,

you can catch these hands too, baby. Okay. But the far side, that shit was evergreen. It was timeless, it was brilliant. It was elegant in the scientific term, elegance, where something so simple accounts for so much. They were self-contained stories. If I didn't get it tomorrow, there's another one.

I didn't have to worry about remembering anything because the lady with the beehive and the horn rim glasses, she's going to be a different lady next time anyway. There were no recurring characters. It was really nice. Yeah. Now, as an adult, I'm 42 years old, and it came back. And that's awesome. Like, it is back as of January of this year.

But then, of course, my brain starts grinding because that was essentially the impetus of our podcast together, is we started noticing certain things that keep recurring over time. Just recently, it did an episode of the Twilight Zone. You also have taken on Battlestar Galactica or Orkza over time.

All of this has happened before. And all of this will happen again. Yeah. Yeah. So to use one of those examples as the tagline for all of this. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I started thinking, like, well, what does it say about right now that the far side is coming back? What's the same now as was the same in January of 1980? The world has gone completely bug-fuck nuts. Again. So. Yes. Yeah. The world has gone completely bug-fuck nuts again So yes, yeah, well, that's what's the same because yeah, okay, or your relic in Cilarson likes round numbers Well, you know that too. Yeah, I mean, you know 40 years is a nice, you know kind of thing But I'm I'm yeah, I'm trying to think so 1980 we have in Olympics we don't attend good. We sit out

We have the other super pet we're watching the other superpower Start getting their asses kicked in in a war against a third-grade group of tribal people in the mountains of Central Asia, which like nobody saw coming. Nobody's like, oh, yeah, okay, well, the Soviets are rolling in, they're like, they're fucking done. And then no wait, didn't we have the same problem in Vietnam? Like, shouldn't we have seen this coming? I like to think that they just felt left out and wanted their own Vietnam. Yeah, well you said that before.

Yeah, you know, yeah, it's like, well, you know, hey, hey, hey, we want to have our imperial failure too. Yeah, we're big boys. We can do this. Yeah, yeah, you know, the Italians, the Italians had... Ethiopia. Ethiopia. We had Vietnam. And they had Afghanistan. And now we have Afghanistan too.

Again, we don't want to be left out either. It's like a debut time coming out party. You know you've made it to empire when you're ready to collapse. Wow, you know, that's that's actually that's that's like you're throwing that out. There's a bond not, but that's actually remarkably pithy and and well elegant. Thank you. Thank you. So yeah, what I we going on in 1988?

The pedicogy for your world history, kids. Yeah, yeah, because that's because that's brilliant. So let's see, 1980, 1980. Afghanistan, we don't go to the Olympics because of Afghanistan. Reagan gets elected. Well, he's in January. Yeah, in January of 80 primaries are still happening. Yeah, he's still running So Carter so Carter's in the White House We have been through now two gas crises. There's a recession on

I ran it's doing its thing Like we have hostages in Iran. Oh yeah. Are people are hostages? We literally the most powerful nation in the world have a bunch of hostages being held that we can't do anything and get them back. Well, we were unwilling to.

Let's be fair. Carter never fired a bullet, never dropped a bomb. One of the reasons why is is because there was a sandstorm That that stopped his one attempt to do so and he was trying to go through diplomacy Oh, yeah, well and and we could at some point I'm gonna need to try to find a way to match that mission up to something in pop culture because there's actually an awful lot of shit That went wrong. It wasn't just a sandstorm. True. True.

There was fuel staging. I mean, that whole operation was a complete snafu, like from the get go. And interestingly, Ross Perot actually had a successful version of it. So I bet you there's meat on that bone of private. Oh, that's good. That's good. There you go. Oh, there you go.

Private enterprise solving the problems that's go investors. There you go. Oh, there you go. Private enterprise solving the problems that the EPA cannot. Yeah, the EPA can't do. So this man has no dick. Until dickless here. I'm going to get you. I'm going to get you. I'm going to miss him.

All right. So that's 1980. Any other fun stuff? Yeah, energy crisis. Yeah, that's an awful lot of stuff. So yeah, we, here's what it all, it's a tie it all up in a nice big fat bow. I think we as a society were suddenly having grapple with the limitations

of our hegemonic position. Like we were the most powerful nation in the world, but there was all this other shit we couldn't do anything about because we were just powerless. And so, or we felt powerless or we were just powerless. And so, or we felt powerless, or we were making choices that made us powerless, whatever, for ordinary folks, it felt like we're the most powerful country in the world, but like we can't stop the universe shitting on us. Well, yeah, it's like we are so powerful that we draw all the water, but actually it turns out if you punch us in the nose, we don't know what to do.

Yeah, no, totally. I think so. Well, so like any other time that I've asked the same question of why is this coming back or what not, I start looking at the conditions under which the art was made in the first place. And so here are my findings. Here is my journey. OK. Like, here we go.

Any story starting in 1980, we need to look back to a French symbolist playwright who was born in 1873. Alfred Jerry. OK. OK. I mean, I've said that time after time, really. Just, you know. No, you've said, if you fall I will catch you I will be

waiting. God damn it that was good well done well done the student has become the master. Oh god damn yes indeed. Oh. Okay, that's all I got in me, probably didn't know. Hey man, time stamp on that is about 13.50 or so, so well done sir. 63 episodes and 13 minutes in. I guess the bacteria. Yes, the bacterial count has gone up enough

that you have, you also have been co-opted by this disease that I have. So, like I tell, people at bars, yes. Any story starting in 1980, you have to go back to French symbolist playwright, Alphardierre, who was born in 1873. I mean, that's just common knowledge. Okay, this is why you have never said this to me

because we've never been in a bar together. So, yeah, obvious. All right. This is this is my game as it were. Yes. So, okay. And I mean, really, if you think about it, 80s, 80s, he's saying, yes. Now we know why. I know. So yeah, now what we've known. Yeah, well, I hate that we've all we've all been trying to keep it on the download, but we have all known we don't know if you have we don't actually need to pin it on Alfred Jerry either. They're there. They're systemic underlying issues. Okay.

So now, so now educate me because I'm a Philistine. Okay. Yeah. Well, I mean, who is Jerry? If you think about it, really, most of the things that I've talked about here stretch about to Alpha Jerry, just some are more direct than others. All right. So Alpha Jerry, and I'm going to butcher French names because that's what a Latinist will

do. Alpha Jerry was born in the town southwest of Paris in 1873 to an alcohol. Yeah, I'm going to quibble real fast. Okay. Latinists don't butcher French. French butcher's Latin. Fair, but they're still alive. So I did. Yeah. So yeah. Okay. So so born born to. Born to an alcoholic salesman. Okay. And a mother who loved literature and music and who had a genetic predisposition toward insanity. He had, I think, a sister and a grandparent who ended up in an asylum.

After she left his father, his mother moved them up to Brittany, France. So they went up to Northern France. Okay. So I'm going to pause you right there because I find it interesting that we're talking about and artists who had a very strong attachment to their mother had a father who was shiftless in one way or in this case alcoholic and Who who had a mother figure who was a Jason to or or suffered from some level of mental illness? Yes This is the sounding an awful lot like Robert E. Howard. I was gonna say it off Hitler

Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, you know, we talked we talked about Howard and how much he sounded like a futurist That's very true and Jerry Jerry is gonna fit neatly in there without being that at all Okay, yeah, so Alfred was decent at school and at 15 years old he co-wrote his first play with a classmate, poking fun at their obese physics teacher, whom they considered rather dim-witted. They used marionettes and this is an important detail. They used marionettes to put the play on at a friend's house. And the physics teacher, whose name was A-Bare or Herbert, the marionette was round, had

three teeth, a retractable ear, and other features that would later come to manifest in his most famous character. So, yeah, even at 15, he'd written his most famous character already. He's just going to keep tumbling it over and over until it's polished. In France, he wrote poems, and he was pretty good at it. By 1893, he was struck with influenza though. His mother and his sister nursed him back to health and then his mother got it and died. Oh, that's not gonna fuck him up at all. Not at all.

Two years later, his estranged father died and Alpergott and inheritance. And he spent it as quickly as he could, marrying the best of both family predilections, becoming an alcoholic with questionable sanity. All right, you know, like you do. All right. Now like all good French alcoholics under five feet tall, he was drafted into the army. Okay, wait, back up.

Back up, back up, back the truck up. Sure, sure. Yeah. So I feel like you buried the lead here. Hold on. Hold on, hold on. Sure. Hold on.

Okay. Most of this episode is about short Frenchman, by the way. There's at least three of them. To lose Le Trek? No, actually. Although I think I do bring him up. Okay. Yeah. Like if you're talking about short Frenchman, you'd have to, but hold on. Oh, actually, although I think I do bring him up. Okay. Yeah. Like if you're talking

about short Frenchman, you'd have to, but hold on. Oh, sure. Hold on. You're telling me. Uh-huh. This, this, this frog was, was under five feet tall. Yep. Okay. As a short guy, uh-huh. This would have had my buy inin way higher from word one. Okay, so he's under five feet tall. Yes. He's a confirmed alcoholic. Yes. And now did he join the army?

No, he was drafted. He was drafted. Okay, because this is the 1890s. Yeah, okay. All right, everybody. So somehow that didn't get him whatever the French equivalent is was a for F. No, no like yeah Because um, what did you have to do to get medically disqualified?

I don't know. I mean being a drunk is not a medical disqualification And being sure isn't either You'd think it'd be an under five feet tall might be. It would actually be an advantage. You could be the guy who's running a wire cable across the trenches. OK, a trench warfare hero. OK, I can see that.

All right. But handling a rifle gets a lot tougher when you get below a certain, I'm just going to say. All right, so anyway. Well, in fairness fairness though the the Japanese Army in the 1930s there their main Rifle was actually as tall if not taller than some of their soldiers. I mean that thing was made extra big But the well, yeah, that's what the air socket there are artists like that. Yeah, I know that. I know that partly because

Artel Sorian games Mike Maxson Mike Ponsmith named one of the mega corporations in Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk before that 2013 2013 after the Arisaka manufacturing company which made the rifles that were made for Japanese Army. So Arasaka, A-R-A-S-A-A. Anyway, so yeah, no, the Arisaka rifle was particularly long because they were looking for long range accuracy. Yeah. But, alright. They were taller than soldiers too. So, he was, however however excused from drill usually because the clothing that they had, the smallest uniform was still comically too big for him.

Uh, yeah. And because of this silliness and because of the health issues that did stem from his alcoholism, he did get discharged. But that didn't stop him from drafting him. It just he washed out. Um, and then he went to live and drink and write in Paris. Like you do. Uh-huh. And he hung out with a lot of the art critics at the time, the artistic intelligentsia. Picture like a really sad version of all the buddies

in Mulan Rouge. Okay. So there's your two words reference. Or the Elgonquin round table with all the alcoholism and none of the wit. Yes. Yes. So, in this play, well, I'll get to the play in a second. So eventually, he writes his most important play, which is really the thing that will help

explain the far side more than 80 years later. It's called Ubu Roy. Ubu. Uh-huh. R-O-I. R-O-I. So, King Ubu. Okay.

Now, does the name Ubu bring any bells for you? I'm going to have to confess that it does not. So, not sit Uu Sit, good luck. Oh, they named that production studio after this. Yes. Okay, yeah. All right, all right. I'm, you have all of my attention.

So in Ubu Roy, a fat, incompetent false tooth grotesque caricature of a king is essentially a parody of Macbeth. His wife convinces him to start a revolution in Poland and overthrow the king. They do this and Ubu becomes the king. Now I'm going to get into the plot here and it's going to seem somewhat farcical because it is. Ubu so heavily taxes the people and throws out all the civil servants that he's the only one that can collect taxes from the beleaguered people.

His henchman goes and starts and fights, starts a fight with the Tsar of Russia, who then declared war on Ubu's Poland. He rides out to face the Russians and his wife, Ubu's wife, is looting the country's treasury and running off. Ubu gets beat by the Russians, he all of his followers die, and he gets attacked by a bear. His wife pretends to be the archangel Gabriel

and tries to trick him into forgiving her for her theft. Eventually, after he knocks down some attackers with the body of the bear that attacked him, he and his wife flee to France. That's the synopsis. Okay. Yeah. The central character is notorious

for his infantile engagement with his world. Ubu inhabits a domain of greedy self satisfaction and self gratification. Jerry's metaphor for the modern man, he is an anti-hero. Fat, ugly, vulgar, gluttonous, grandiose, dishonest, stupid, jijun, voracious greedy, cruel, cowardly and evil. I had a lot of fun with the design. Clearly. Yeah. I'm just going to say the moment you bring out jijun, you're wrong. But it's like me referencing the Algonquin roundtable. You're just scoring points.

Yeah. Come on now. So I just want to go over that list of things again, because it's going to play in later. Um, fat, ugly, vulgar gluttonous grandiose, dishonest, stupid, jazoon, voracious, greedy, cruel, cowardly, and evil. rule, cowardly and evil. Yes, I have no idea how that's going to come in later on. You'll be surprised. What on earth are you talking about, Damien? Well, it's, it's the, the play is ridiculous too.

And it's a grotesque send up of several classics. If you've ever seen Hamlet to the movie Ham movie Hamlet, too, have you ever seen that? No. So much fun. It's got that kind of feel. It's, it's, it's, okay. God, I forget who the main character is in it, but Catherine Keener is in it.

Okay. And Elizabeth Shoe is in it, playing Elizabeth Shoe. It's just, it's, it's cheap, it's tautry, it's obscene without even realizing why. I mean, Hamlet II has a song called Rock Me Sexy Jesus. Okay. So, the thing is, yeah. And that came out, God, I was teaching where I'm teaching now.

So we're talking 2007 maybe. And it was fun, right? But in 1896, this kind of a plot has a very different impact. The play itself opened and closed on the same night because... Well because it was incredibly seditious. I mean, the idea of... Because, okay, we're talking about the 1890s here. So Germany is still ruled by royal family.

Uh, France is the only one that's not. Yeah, I mean, yeah, no, you're still dealing with, at, at, at the, yeah, France, France was the most liberal democracy of all the democracies of Western Europe at that time. The Spanish were still a royal family to Germans, obviously, the, the Austrians, the Russians, the Russians, the Russians, the Austrians, the Austrians, the Austrians, the Austrians. Everybody was ruled by kings, all of those, well kings and queens, but all of those royal families had, at the very least, individuals within them who had reputations for being one or more of those negative, you know, adjectives that he used a moment ago.

Quite so. And anything, I mean, like Lézé Majesté was a crime in a number of countries. He's lucky he put this on in France because if he'd done it in Germany, he'd have been hauled off and thrown in jail. Cause I think Kaiser Wilhelm was in charge of that. No, Wilhelm hadn't taken over yet. Well, I'm getting there in about a paragraph. So yeah, but anyway, yeah, no,

the whole in Zollerns would not have tolerated that shit at all. No. Okay. So the play, I don't scandal us at the time. The play opened with a mispronunciation of the word for shit. That was the opening line. And in 1896, now when the play was over, a riot broke out.

An actual honest to goodness, God damned riot. Like I'm saying, it was a different time in 1896. Oh, and after that, because the play was literally outlawed, Alfred Jerry moved his play into puppetry from then on. I'm going to say that sentence again because it's worth repeating. After his play was outlawed, he moved it into puppetry from then on. So this is the 1890s equivalent of the comic book genre. Yes, yes, yes. This is Mad Magazine becoming a magazine. It's it's so much that and I'm gonna bring that up later. So, in 1896, yeah.

Okay, so, okay, Riot broke out at the end of this play. Yeah, which is the goddamn craziest thing I've ever heard of. I've never heard of a play causing a fucking riot. A riot like Chicago, 1968, you know, like, yeah, no, it won't, but okay, here's, here's the thing though, like, you're talking of Cleveland, you know, like, oh, riot, like sports riots, I kind of get, but, you know, the riot over a play. Yeah. Okay, no, okay, so, so, but here's the deal. No, in that in that time period, there, there wasn't the mass media the same way there is now. True.

And, and so, you know, going to a play was something that, that, you know, people, people did for entertainment in, in the way that we, you know, watch TV or go to a sporting event. that we watched TV or go to a sporting event. And, and, you know, it's, it's also worth noting that there were classical symphonies. And I'm, I'm blanking right now. I want to say it's Stravinsky. No, rights of spring. Who the hell did rights of spring?

Anyway, a Russian composer and somebody please on Twitter correct me when you hear this tell me who the hell it was because it's gonna drive me nuts But when the rights of spring opened it's true. They write it. Yeah, okay. Yeah, but Stravinsky's rights of spring was was this like It incensed people like like it was this incredibly sensual decadent, oh my God, you know, the nature of the music was such that people considered this aberration and this horrible, you know, degraded perverse kind of thing. This is the 17 years before that though. Yeah, I would know, I understand, but what I'm trying to say is it was a different era

What always gets me about these stories? I mean, I'd heard about Stravinsky forever ago So you said well, you know after this play was over there was a riot. I'm like, yeah, okay see that What always gets me is there was wait until the end of the performance right? They're polite like they write with their fingers out. Like you're going to, you're going to, okay. So, so I could just see them like in an airplane movie, sitting in the seats as everything's going on,

like tying the rags around the tops of the vodka bottles, do the, do the, do the Molotov cocktails, and like, you know, sharpening the stakes for the barricades, you know, like, like, and still standing for the applause, and then being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, now is now. Okay. So, so now I fuck shit up.

Right. Okay. You know, like, okay, curtain call. Let's fucking roll. Like how that I don't get, that's the part I never get. Like, how do you wait until the end of the, if you're going to write it about something, why do you wait until the end of the if you're gonna write it about something Why do you wait until the end are you sitting through the whole whole need the whole time like? Okay, so like in the third act if he fixes this shit. I'm not gonna break windows right

We're not flipping any cop cars if if the main character and the romantic in the romantic interest actually wind up together at the end Then we're not flipping op cars, but so help me glad if he kills the dog I'm like we're done like could you imagine like I'm just trying to think of a movie that I would riot after or a play and I can't see the red line I wanted to punch somebody in the fucking head after the thin red line. Really? I think I watched it one hundred feeter. I was probably the best time to watch. I did that in Sensei drunk. So I went to see that with a couple of friends. And I got way too big a soda and it was way too long a movie.

So you wanted to punch people because you had a blabberbuster? I got way too big a soda and it was way too long a movie. So you wanted a punch people because you had a flat outbuster? Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, I got up because it was also an interminably slow fucking movie. So I got up and I went to the bathroom and I came back and I'm standing not in the doorway to the theater but like at the ramp. I don't wanna go to my seat yet,

because I'm watching the screen, and everything happening on the screen looks like, oh, okay, well, they're about to wrap this all up, because it's been two hours and 10 minutes, so here we go. And the movie kept going for another 40 minutes Yeah, I mean, you know My it wasn't an issue of my bladder. It was like pick a fucking ending

Because there were three different times like I walked up and I was like oh, okay, all right They're gonna end it now and and you know Danny Moss swelling music and then they kept going And I and I was like okay, well cane, Swelling Music, and then they kept going. And I was like, okay, well, can I go, no, okay, no, no, okay, this thread of the story is now coming to an end, they're gonna end them, okay, now we're gonna end the movie, Swelling Music, and he hits that, and he'll end it, and it kept going. And like, when the movie finally fucking ended, I was like, no, no, no, I'm not moving yet. No, they're gonna, it's gonna rise from the dead.

Like something's gonna fucking happen. So yeah, no, at the end of that movie, I wanted to punch somebody. So I can understand getting to the end of the movie and be like, all right, all right, somebody, give me, I wish a motherfucker would. Somebody give me reason. Okay. Well, you would have fit in on that night. So I would, I would have been punching people

left in the right of sure. So we're gonna go to commercial. And then when we come back from our ad break, I'll give you the context of why this was, and you pretty much have nailed it, but I just wanna name some names. So we'll catch you on the other side of the break. Hello, Geek Timers. This is producer George, interrupting this podcast to let you know that

we have space available. This space could be used to promote your product, book, event, group, even wish a special someone happy birthday. If you're interested in using this space, please contact us on Twitter via private message at Geek History Time. Welcome back. Good ads. Be good to have more ads so if people want to put stuff in there, like the producer George message said, let us know. You got birthdays coming up. We're actually doing a pretty good job of recording within about a month of release. So in the meantime, in 1896, essentially, Europe is ruled by Queen

Victoria, Zarniclus, Wilhelm II, Franz Joseph, and Felix Fauré. Fauré Fauré, it's French, I don't know. But he's a French president, yes. Oh, okay. Yeah. And he has, because everybody else, everybody else you just, you just mentioned was a royal. Yes. And then him and I'm like, yeah, wait. I wrote you guys. I wrote you guys. I wrote you guys.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I recognized all those names, but his way. Yeah. It's the kind of thing that gets left out of, you know, they're like, oh, here's all the royals. That's what they had in common.

And like they left out the legally elected one, the one democracy at the time. Well, okay, so, but here's the thing. The deal is, I don't know if I'm sticking up for the historiographers responsible for that, but when you have a dynasty running things, there's a thread throughout that kind of makes it an easier mnemonic to try to remember. People is this set of names. When you have a liberal democracy that elects a new factotum, every four years, eight years, six years, whatever. It's, unless you're specifically talking about a specific set of events,

then within a broader curriculum, like we can talk about the whole in Zohlern dynasty running, what is now Germany, for the length of time that they did. Right. No, I see what you mean. As a group of people, you know, World War One ends the old world order. And that's usually, you know, but the thing is that, you know, you have all those empires. This one was an empire run by a democracy.

I think that's where the note, okay, good point. Yeah. All right. So he had no fewer than six prime ministers in the course of four years. Wait, hold on. Yeah. Okay. So, so what we're saying is the third republic and the VIMAR republic had about the same level of political stability. Well, interestingly, he was elected specifically because he was so bland, he offend nobody. Politically, because personally he was really entertaining. He entered a scandalous affair almost immediately,

entered into the Franco-Russian alliance, made a shitty choice in the Dreyfus affair, and in 1899 he died of applevax. Shucks, you. In 1899 he died of applevax. you. Mm-hmm. In 1899 he died of apple. Plexi while possibly getting a blow job from his mistress in the presidential office. So what we're saying is he's kind of the guy

Uncle Billy wanted to be. Potentially. Potentially. I mean, I'd say Billy did a better job quite honestly. He stayed alive. Well, yeah. Okay, yeah. But I mean, if you say Billy did a better job quite honestly. He stayed alive. Well, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. What I mean, if you're going to go out, yeah, I don't know if I'd wanted to do that to anybody. Okay. Good point. Because then there's a gap time of when did they figure it out and just, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Good point. So, his play, okay, back to Jerry's play. Jerry. Yeah. Yeah. Is what really, so that's the context under which it was written. It really influenced what would later come to be known as theater of the absurd in the

1950s. Now, Jerry. Yeah, hold on. Yeah, back up. Theater of the absurd. We're talking about waiting for Gado. And it's Ilk. Yes.

Okay. Yeah. Just thinking sure I know what we're talking about. I Gado. And if... Y'all... Y'all... Just thinking, sure, I know what we're talking about. I'll get that, sir. Okay. So he spent most of his very short life, the rest of his short life, because he died in 1907, due to tuberculosis and drugs,

in a truncated apartment, which was fine for a man of his height, but everyone else had to stoop to get in. It was weird. There's so much I edited out. Oh, hello. Yeah. Okay. So do you ever see Bing on Markovitch?

A Markside. What's that? It sounds like a character on the far side. Yeah, except far side was much shorter and much more self-contained. Like there's so much backstory that you would need for this to work. Yeah, no, I understand, but you know what I mean.

But yeah, you know, and take any, take any vignette out of his daily life, and it could be plugged in. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, what you ever see, he was a surdist. Well, he wasn't. Okay. He was a proto-observative. He was a symbolic symbolist.

And er, yes. Okay. No, I have not seen being John Malcolm. he was a symbolist. And Earth. Yes. OK. No, I have not seen Bing John now. OK. There is a 7 1 1 2 half floor in Bing John. Like the whole thing happens in an office building that I think is a send back to that. I think they were clearly looking at Jerry's life.

So he influenced several art and literary critics, French authors, artists, poets. Uh, poets, um, Ubu gave the audience quote a particular kind of pleasure for an audience watching these infantile attacks. Part of the satisfaction arises from the fact that in Berlesque mode, which, uh, in the Berlesque mode, which Jerry invents, there is no place for consequence. While Ubu may be relentless in his political aspirations and brutal in his personal relations, he apparently has no measurable effect on those who inhabit the farcical world

which he creates around himself. He thus acts out our most childish rages and desires in which we seek to gratify ourselves at all cost. and desires in which we seek to gratify ourselves at all cost. Okay. Okay. Now onto the 1950s. Okay.

Wait, wait, wait, hold on. Wait, I think just leaving that there is not a bad move. Okay. Because it's, I mean, I'm punchin' Boso in the nose. Okay. All right. So, yeah. Okay. All right. So, yeah. Okay.

So, so, yeah. He, he, at this point, I got to admit, before we make this time skip, I have to admit, I'm now, you know, hearing all of this, and like this guy is the seminal figure in, in, in multiple kinds of genres and is this proto or absurdist and all this stuff. How exactly is it? I'm going to say I'm pretty well read dude. Yes you are. I don't want to be arrogant about it, but I think I'm a pretty well read dude. You're far broader than I am. I'm pretty, you know, I'm educated. I know how some masters agree yet, like you do, but you know, I'm an educated man.

How did I not know about this dude? Like, I feel this is a personal failing. Like, I'm now looking, I'm now like, like, oh my God, there's this huge gap in my knowledge that's based around this one dude. Like, how have I not heard this name before? Yeah, the connective tissue between him and a whole bunch of stuff that you have heard of

is quite interesting actually. Like, it's a lot of, like, whoa, it kind of comes back to him a lot. Okay. Yeah. Well, the 1890s are such an inter-calorie kind of time. It's basically like, yeah, yeah, yeah, and then everybody got ready for war. That's what really stole the thunder in a most poor education.

Okay, yeah, that's okay. Good point. Yeah. We hear about, we hear about Victoria Nira. Yeah. We mostly hear about Victoria. You hear about the buildup of alliances. You'll hear about Wilhelm II. You might hear about Belgium Congo.

You might hear about Nietzsche maybe in the 1890s, because you guys in 1995. And you might, and you know, if you're really, really, you know, digging around, you'll hear about the drivers affair. Right. And even that is half a paragraph. EOL, yeah, it's, yeah. OK, all right.

Yeah, all right. I feel a little less bad. There's a lot of really important things happening in the world at that time with regards to revolution, blowing up despots and stuff like that. The state of flux. So not knowing about this one playwright, I give everyone a pass on that. But you know, you hear about the revolutions of 1848.

And then you're kind of, and then the world history curriculum in Gen Civ, just kind of skips from there to, okay, and then we have imperialism, and all of this, and you know, Bountive Power, this, that, and the other thing, and all these guys, and now we're moving on to, you know, the build up to World War I. Yes. Like you said, and so, yeah, this is like interstitial. Yeah, it really is.

It's tissue. So okay, it's fun. It's fun. But it's by no means the meat on the bone that you want. Okay. So okay, 1950s Gary Larson was born into Como, Washington in 1950. So so he is a like this, this is, this is, how do I want to put this? This is, he is at the crest of the wave of the baby boom. Yes, absolutely. So he is right there on the peak of that statistical, you know, Bell that we see. Yeah.

Both of his parents worked lower middle class lifestyle from what I could find. He went to college, got a bachelor's of arts in communications. For a while, he was interested in biology. He was the youngest of two. His older brother Dan would scare him every chance he got. But Dan would also help Gary catch all manner of fauna and build terraria in their basement to keep them in

Okay, so growing up in suburban Tacoma essentially through the Eisenhower and Kennedy years as a youth would have put him Yeah, it would have put him in an environment that was keenly aware of the existential threat of nuclear war with both Russia and China Even if like many kids he wouldn't have had the context for it and he could have easily ignored it, it would have been in the water in which he swam, which is something we're fond of saying. Well, yeah, it would have been, it would have been, it's effused the atmosphere. I mean, you know, very, very early on in our conversations, you know, we talked about the experiences our parents had as homeowners.

And he's into coma, which is, I mean, there are a lot of people figuring out which places would get attacked first in a nuclear strike. And up in Washington, that's where you've got a lot of manufacture for airplanes and such like that. Yeah. There's part of the state that is. Yeah, so yeah. I think his later artwork absolutely belies that influence,

by the way, even though he ascribes it to just his older brother being shitty and kind. So we'll get to Larson's first far side comic on January 1st, 1980 in the San Francisco Chronicle in a little bit. But really to get to Gary Larson, we of course have to talk about more French playwrights. Like you do. Because obviously. Yeah.

And to talk about them, I need to talk about Albert Camus. Oh, God. And a little bit about Jean Paul Sartre afterwards. But don't worry, I will get to Eugene in Asco. I have not abandoned you, Eugene. So. Okay.

Here we go with Albert Camus. Oh God. Okay. You don't like Albert Camus. This is the philosophical equivalent for me, I've eating my wheebies. Well, let's see if I can pour a little sugar on it. Like, like I know I have to do it, but oh my god. Okay, well, so Albert Camus of French philosopher, he wrote an essay in 1942 titled The Myth of Cicifus.

In 1935, he adjoined the French Communist Party to fight against the inequalities that he saw in Algeria specifically despite not being a Marxist Okay, hold on. Yes, now was Kimu a black foot Remind me with that French born Algerian or ethnic ethnic French born in Algeria. No, okay. No Oh God, I can't remember where he lived. He was in France proper though. Okay, because I'm trying to remember who it was, but there was... Jacques Derri-Dau was. Okay.

Yeah, he was into deep constructionism, but that's not until the 70s. Yeah. Okay, yeah. So, not who I'm thinking. Jacques Derri-Dau was a French Jew living in Algeria. Like, he, yeah. Wow. Yeah.

So, um, Kemu was not a Marxist. He was much more spiritual than most Marxists. He believed that morality was not merely a function of history. And so he quit that group and joined the Algerian Communist Party because he saw them as having a better shot at ending totalitarian colonial rule. Okay. When the PCA, which is the... Something, something else here. Yeah, and the Algerian People's Party. Oh, it's the party communist, Alger. Yeah. So, and when they and the Algerian people's party suffered from fighting

amongst each other, Kamu was expelled from the PCA for not being Stalinist enough. Yeah, okay, I'm sorry, I have to stop you there, but you talk about the PC and the Algerian people's party. Oh yeah, it's very money-pifon. Yeah, I like it, think of his, no, we're are the Julian people's front with the people's front? Would you do? Yeah, fuck off. Yeah, those bastards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's okay. Yeah. And from then on, he also has dropped left has always had.

Yeah. Well, that's that's being a coalition party. You tend to abrade each other quite a bit. You don't have a single savior on the left. Yeah. Yeah, being a coalition party, you tend to abrade each other quite a bit. You don't have a single savior on the left. So he also had the twin focus of being deeply distrustful of bureaucracy and being very interested in the idea of human dignity. So while he was in the PCA, he'd been the main organizer of the Workers Theater. Okay.

In the late 1930s, he'd been a writer for an anti-fascist leftist newspaper that specifically focused on French Algeria. In 1940 that paper got banned by the French government. So then he flew to Paris and became the editor-in-chief of Paris Soire, Suire, S-O-I-R. Suire. Suire. Paris Soire. Well, the French don't know how to spell. Right, well, they're... Or they're remarkably consistent, we just aren't hip-toe their codes. No. While he was there, he wrote his first trilogy. And he...

I forget what he exactly called them, but essentially he would write things in a trilogy. It would be a novel, a play, and a philosophical essay. And specifically, he was tackling the concept of the absurd and meaninglessness. And he did this in 1942. He ended up being friends with Jean Paul Sart and was an active member of the resistance after the army refused to take him.

No, okay, wait. Yep. Do we know why the Jeremy, was it political? No, I don't think well with him, it might have been. I think it was because he wasn't healthy enough, which is interesting. And the Nazis are marching through. So in the miss in the myth of Cicifus, Kamu said that human existence is devoid of meaning,

but paradoxically, humans will never stop seeking that meaning. Yeah. And the interpretations that I've seen and may have bastardives are misunderstood, is that there is no inherent meaning in human existence, right? But our quest for meaning gives it whatever makes meaning, creates whatever meaning we make for it. We are responsible for making the meaning of our own existence. That's a little bit more sart than it is, Kamu, but they're fairly close together. Okay. So he said that the moment that Sisyphus was happy

was the moment that Sisyphus returned to the stone at the bottom of the hill and started pushing it again. So just for our listeners that aren't picturing the Sisyphus was a guy who basically called out Zeus for being shitty and he was punished for the eternity of the afterlife by having to push a rock up to the top of a hill and just to see it fall back down one way or the other. He could never get it fully balanced. I think there was a promise that once he got it balanced and he could be amongst the gods or something. But yeah, different stories.

Yeah, it was, it was, yeah. And depending on the version, it's either that he could never manage to get it balanced or it would, it would shatter into a bunch of pieces, roll back down the hill and then reform. Right. So, yeah, it probably depends on the island that you were on when you heard the story. Yeah, yeah.

So, living in an archipelago, it's the way it works. Yeah. So, okay. You know, interesting. I just want to come back to that for just a second. The Greeks, obviously their religions influence the Romans, but the Greeks were on a shit-ton of islands, right? Archipelago.

Yeah, Archipelago. Archipelago. Yeah. The Norse gods, these are two cultures that are separated by over a thousand years and a shit ton of space and they never had any contact with each other. Yeah, but what I find fascinating is this. Let me see if I can remember it. The day, the Monday is called Monday because the moon. The moon, right? Yeah, moon's day. Yeah. Well, and Sunday is called Sunday because of the sun, right? In Latin, the word for Sunday is solace, the day of the sun. In Latin, the word for Monday is the day of the moon,

Luna. Tuesday, that's Tears Day, if I recall, in Latin, it's Martis. Now Tears, the God of War. I mean, they're all kind of, and it's God's of War. Yeah, it's just damn it. Martis is yours. We're talking, yeah, we're talking, we are talking about the Norse here,

and war, like Odin was the God of War. Yeah, speaking of which, Odin is Wednesday, Woden's day, right? The day for Wednesday in Latin is, Oh, is Mercuri actually, it's the day of Mercury. Mercury. Although Odin is seen as a traveler as well. And so is Mercury.

Yes. Well, you know, what that gets back to is the linguistic idea, anthropological linguistic idea of all of these cultures having their roots in the same Indo. What's the? It's called the PIE the proto-indir European language? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're they're all I mean, you know and these and these concepts are so so So big deeply so yeah, so so deeply embedded in the in the proto beginnings of Anything we would recognize as our culture that like you could look at the sithians. Yeah, but find that stuff. They would have had contact with the Romans and Greeks.

The Norse didn't. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm getting my timelines wrong. I'm talking about, I'm talking about there's a reason the reason this is in my head is that it's an article I saw online where they discovered a set of boots. Yeah, for two is Scythian. But they were two, the year 2000 BC. Yeah. So like a 4,000 year old, which, which, for those of you in the audience who aren't up on this, this is a pair of fabric leather and fabric boots and what is astounding about this is they have been

dated through carbon dating and layer dating and all the other stuff that archaeologists do, to 2000 BC. And if you look up, you know, Scythian Boots 2000 BC, you'll find this thing. And they are, first, they're gorgeous, I just want to say. Secondly, they, it is, for anybody who doesn't understand how archaeology works and what the problems of it are, it is vanishingly rare to find anything made out of fabric that's more than a few hundred years old. That's any kind of natural fiber. I should I should add Aviotic because in in you know 2000 years from now they're gonna find all the fucking polyester in the world

Yes, because that doesn't break down, but but cotton linen yeah, silk all of that stuff of course is biological material Which means it gets eaten by bacteria which means after a couple of hundred years, it's gone. And the reason these were preserved is they were way up in Siberia and the Permafrost, and they were literally frozen for four thousand years. And so when I'm talking about sithians in this context, I'm talking about, you know, a couple of thousand, like, long before the Greeks, long before the Romans, as we recognize them, that's when I say Scythians,

that's the group I'm talking about, like proto-Scythians, proto-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo-Indo- the Eastern Mediterranean area. Yeah, well, I guess what I'm saying is that they don't have that going up to Norway. Yeah, well, all of these things are coming from the same set of deeply buried roots. Yeah, again, I still am stuck on the fact that Norway is way the fuck up north, past several impassable bodies of water for those people.

And again, a thousand years later. Yeah, well migration periods. Yeah, I'm just, you know, the one of one of the most remarkable things that we're seeing now looking at archeological evidence now that we have access to the kind of mitochondrial DNA analysis tools and all that kind of stuff Is we're figuring out and this is something that the mutual friend of ours online loves loves to to boil down to a simple quote People get around they do they absolutely do now and and and it's it's becoming in It's becoming ever ever clearer that people have been moving

around from generation to generation a great deal more true throughout our history from the neolithic period or older than than we ever had any any concept of for a very long time. True. So, the third day is named for Thor, who is the God of Thunder. The word for Thursday in Latin is Yoise, which is the day of Jupiter, who is the God of Thunder. Friday, and this is my favorite one, Friday is the day of Freya, the goddess of fertility. Well, either Freya or her brother Freya, who is the spear version of that same concept. So the God of fucking. So. Yeah. And the harvest and plants growing. Yeah, but also fucking Yeah, it's in all its variations under reforms.

Mm-hmm. Yes. So what's what's really cool is the Latin word for Friday is when anaries, which is the day of Venus, who's the god of fucking? So Friday has always been the day of fucking. And so now, okay, so hold on. And all the others match up too. So, okay, so this opens up a whole other, a whole other channel, Loub. Uh-huh. So another question is, when the five day work week got decided,

and Friday became the beginning of the weekend. Yep. On a sub-conscious level, you think that was the reason? But they all agreed that, because like it could have been, okay, no, we're going to have the weekend be Sunday and Monday, because Sunday is the day, you know, in Western society, you know, predominantly Christian society, you know, Sunday's the day we all will attend worship. Collectively, we all know. Well, Sunday is the day of the week.

It's the first day of the week and therefore it's the first fruits, right? And the Sabbath is the last day of the week. And, you know, God was not a union guy, but he, you know, he wanted a six day work week. But you get that last day off, which means the day of fucking Happens and then you can sleep in and have your day off. Oh, okay. Yeah tomorrow is the rest day. Yes So get your head in my in my in my first game

pal are gonna recognize that reference, but Okay, yeah, I am I am going to speak up for for Jehovah are gonna recognize that reference. But, okay. Yeah. I am going to speak up for Jehovah here and say that he said, you're gonna rest on this day. Mm-hmm. He never said you're only gonna rest on that day.

Oh, true, true. He said, you're gonna set this day aside. Yeah. And you're gonna make it holy. Okay. And I'm gonna do any work on this day. He never said you gotta work, you know, back this day aside. Yeah. And you're gonna make it holy. Okay. And I'm gonna do any work on this day. He never said you gotta work, you know, back breaking labor the other six.

He just said, this day you set aside. Okay. And of course he was saying this to people who were, you know, shepherds and subsistence farmers. Yeah. So by definition, you're gonna work back breaking labor the other six days. Because otherwise,

yeah, you're taking a fucking day off. Because know you got you got to feed the kids right so you know I think I think had had the had had the revelation of the 10 commandments come down in an industrialized set of circumstances, they look very different. Oh, quite so. Yes. Yeah. Because, you know, God speaks to the audience, he has at the time. So anyway, move on. Sure. So the Romans, a thousand years before the Norse, different Pantheons, different cultures, never touched each other, both had essentially the same days, except for Saturday. Saturday is the day of Saturn who eats all his children. And the Latin one for that is, I forget. It might actually be, well, I don't remember.

Well, okay. But yeah, here's the thing. Saturday is taken directly. The funny thing to me is we have Monday Tuesday, or Sunday Monday, sun moon. And then we have all Norse Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and then we get to Saturday and all of it's a Greek Titan again. Mm-hmm. Like, all the time on my head, I don't even know what the Norse name for that day was.

Yeah, nor I. So anyway. So anyway, back to Cicifus. So Cicifus, Camus, sees Cicifus as being happy, the second he starts pushing the rock again because at that moment he understands the pointlessness of everything. And Cicifus is all of us. Here's a quote, the workmen of today works every day of his life at the same tasks and this fate is no less absurd, but it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. That's Camus. And he's basically focusing on Cicifus' thoughts as he's walking back to the stone that just rolled down the hill. Here's another quote, it is during that return that pause that Cicifus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself.

I think something lost in translation there. I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. And so once Cicifus acknowledges how silly all of this is and how certain his fate actually is, he's truly free to embrace the absurdity at all of it all. And once he does that, there's a contentedness. Camu, imagine that that's the moment of happiness. Okay. Yeah. I understand the chain of logic involved in that. chain of logic involved in that. Yeah. Add, add it as a metaphor.

Mm hmm. I see how it makes sense. Well, let's add an extra layer to that then. Okay. He's a leftist who hated fascism, who saw his own country as an imperial oppressor, and he was banned from saying left his shit and then suddenly his country got overrun with meth-addled superfascists

and he's looking around going yeah nothing means fucking anything I'm sorry the phrase meth methattled super fast. Super fast. So to describe the very mocked is just too perfect. Yeah, it's also Hydra. Yeah, them too. Wow. So in the first chapter, yeah.

In the first chapter of his essay, and I'm not going to tackle the whole thing, but I do want you to see some of the antecedents to what we're going to recognize later. Kamu tackles the idea of suicide as a necessary reaction to the absurdity. If life is absurd and meaningless, does that realization require suicide? To hell of a question to ask, and it's not actually as depressing as you might think, because the idea that we lived, that we lived based on hope, means that we want tomorrow to come. Here's where it gets fun. If tomorrow comes, that brings us one day closer to death, so the very thing that we hope for is the thing that will by necessity destroy us.

Okay. So here's my, just I'm going to interject here with where I'm at hearing this. So I can, I can understand how it is that somebody who really gets into existentialism because that is what we're talking about here. Can. Can. Can. Take. He is not an existentialist. That doesn't come until start. But you're right.

We are right there. We're crested. We're right. We're seeing the interweaving between that and absurdity. We're opening the door to walk in the threshold to it. Well, because Camus is really big on if you have any hope whatsoever You're not an absurdist and so he's dogmatic in absurdism. Okay, but yes, they are there cousins is he's right up there So so what we're what we're looking at here is is the under is some of the underpinnings of

Existentialism. Yes. We would be a better way to put that, maybe. And there is a very, if you take the venn diagram of Buddhism and existentialism, the overlap is really significant. Having spent a lot of time trying to teach Buddhism to middle schoolers. And the thing is, to anybody who hasn't spent a lot of time reading up on all of the background and all of the ins and outs of what all of this stuff means. Right.

But it sounds fucking depressing. So okay, life is suffering. Like what a fucking downer. Yeah, thanks. Hold on. Thank you. Thank you, Gautama. What the hell?

Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Gautama. What the hell? Yeah, and you know, and and I know that parts of my reaction to this is just be good. Well, first off, I'm a deist, which, you know, means that existentialism and I are going to have a fraught relationship to begin with. Well, you might need some Kirka guard to get you there. It's you have probably. But, you know, the premise of what we're talking about, about, you know, everything we're peeting, and then there's no, you know, the march toward our inevitable death.

Mm-hmm. So we hope for this. It is like, we hope for that next day to to oversimplify. We're saying that we're hoping for the next step is is the Freudian death urge. Yes. To, to, you know, again, take a bunch of steps out of the middle here, but you know, it's why the moth flies toward the light, you know, it's that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And, and from, from anybody, and, and I haven't spent a lot of time reading about chemo or sart, I've probably spent more than most people, but that's because I'm a humanities major.

But, but, you know, not nearly as much as you have. And from my point of view, because I'm really big into the far side. Yeah, and that sounds like a fucking downer. What is? Well, oh my God. Well, I'm going to bring you even further down for a second. Oh, great. So thank you.

We hope, and hope is what keeps us from wanting to die. But hope means that we take a step closer to death, which will destroy us, which means hope is actually what's going to kill us. It's kind of like oxidative damage. And on top of that, we live as though our deaths are not certain, which is a really odd hope given what hope gets us to. So, so we, you, you hear

this all the time, if in the event of your death. No, when you die, it is a guaranteed certainty. And yet we live in such a way that our death is not certain. And yet we hope for the next step closer to it. And so if you turn to religion, you are abandoning reason for reason, not raisins. You are abandoning reason for faith, which itself is the ultimate expression of a hope for death, because when you die, you'll get to paradise. Now, heaven is better, therefore having faith that there's a heaven means that ultimately you have that death urge. Now, keep in mind, he did live with Algerian Jews, French Catholics, and Huguenots. Yeah, I'm going to argue that his characterization of I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna argue that his characterization of

Deist outlooks is Kind of the same way that Marx's outlook is on the working class Like you're say you're doing it off a lot of talking for them not having ever kind of like Ben one of them fair I would just point out that if that if you look at the ultimate end goal, the ultimate end goal is not to live in the here and now, but life ever after. Life ever after doesn't happen until death, therefore, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's working the algebra problem backwards. Yeah. Okay. All right. But he says suicide is not the solution because, without human life, the world that we've constructed would have no absurdity and thus the absurd would cease with us. So, we must live without false hope and constantly confront the absurd, recognizing that we will never fully accept it, nor should we, lest we commit suicide,

thereby ending both absurdity and ourselves. Okay. Now, in that last bit, when you say committing suicide, are we talking about literal suicide, or are we also talking about figurative suicide of having just said, you know, whatever, fuck it, give up? Uh, literal, literal. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. So it's kind of the goose that lays a golden egg. Like, you know, the wife wants to cut the goose open, get all the eggs out. Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay.

Thus, glue arrives at three consequences from fully acknowledging the absurd. They are revolt, freedom, and passion. Revolt. Don't accept it. Don't accept the absurd. They are revolt, freedom, and passion. Revolt. Don't accept it. Don't accept the absurd. So once you've acknowledged the absurd, don't accept it. Freedom. You embrace it and you recognize that there is no hope worth having. No point in having hope. And passion, given this freedom and this revolt, the fact that you're not accepting it and you're living with that hope, hope it's not about living your best life, but about living your most life. And I don't mean like the amount of minutes you're putting on the scoreboard, but like

how much life are you squeezing into the minutes that you've got, because you ain't going to get that much. It's not too different than Robin Williams' character, Mr. Keating and Dead Poet Society. Suck the marrow out of life, someday you're gonna be worm food. Okay. And Kamu pointed to various authors, Dostoevsky, Kafka, and he said those guys aren't absurdist because ultimately they had hope. So I'm gonna quiver about Kafka, but okay.

He said that there was a glimmer. Yeah, okay. There were glimmers of hope in Kafka's right. I know. Okay, I didn't say it, but okay, whatever. Yeah. He must have very sensitive hope meter. Yeah.

The metamorphosis did not give me a sense of hope. So. Okay. Yeah. the metamorphosis did not give me a sense of hope. Okay. Yeah. So actually, this is a good place to break it, because next time I'll start your job, I'll start. I'll go and start. We'll then get us to E.N.S. Go, who will then clearly point the way to Gary Larson

under Ronald Reagan and again under Donald Trump. Okay. So that's where we're going. You clearly have a road map. And we have a lot of driving to do. Yes, oh cows. Car. So I'm going to ask you.

Sick. Sick. I think you just answered my question too. I am going to ask you not what you're reading, but what your favorite far side cartoon was. Oh God that's why you got to give me such a hard one at the end of at the end of an episode. There are so many. Oh hey I guess we all aim for the same guy huh. Is is one of them. But I think being the son of an aviator, especially being the son of an airline pilot, my absolute favorite one is where the one panel is broken up into four.

Or it might have been more than four. But it's you're looking head on at the front end of an airplane. Right. A jet liner. And the pilot is clearly talking into a little, you know, hand microadio. And he says, all right, I'm gonna need everybody

to buckle up. We got some turbulence ahead. And then, yeah, it was a four panel. Because in the second panel, the airplane is leaning hard to the right. And the next panel, the airplane is leaning hard to the left. You can see the pilot and the co-pilot both leaning on the stick in both directions, really hard.

That had been more than four panels. But anyway, so it and then there's a panel of of the two of them just laughing their asses off in the cockpit. And then the last panel is the is the captain back on the radio wiping wiping a tear from his eye. That's like my favorite, you know my big and tear as I as he says, Oh, looks like more turbulence. Now here's the thing that is that is almost without doubt my my absolute you told me I could only keep one in my memory for That would probably be it. Okay. Although your sick Carl, sick, sick is right up there. Sure.

But I have to tell you why. Okay. And I already mentioned, of course, my father was an airline pilot. Mm-hmm. So he was a co-pilot on a flight going out of LAX to I want to say it was Denver Or might have been St. Louis anyway the the Weather forecast

indicated that there was going to be heavy Like keep everybody strapped in or they're going to be injuries Like break out the extra barf bags turbulence along the route right in a specific place along along the flight path they were going to be following. So they got in the airplane and and within the first 30 minutes of the flight the captain announced hey we're we we have been advised by the weather service.

There's gonna be really heavy turbulence. So everybody is aware, we're not gonna be turning off the fast and seat belt sign. Everybody needs to stay in seats unless it's an emergency. And they flew for another hour and a half, two hours, they get over the mountains where the turbulence is supposed to be, and it is smooth as glass.

There is not a bump, nothing. And the flight attendants ding to the cabin. Hey, we want to see it. Can you turn off the sign so we can get up so they can get up and do their jobs, right? You know, go, you know, and the cabin says, no, no turbulence. We've been told barf bag upchuck, like hurt people, no one is getting up, no. So hard no. And my dad as the co-pilot, is the one who has to deliver the message. He's the one who who does that. The captain makes the decision, but the copilot does the communicating.

Okay. So no, captain says no, we're not doing that. Hang up, hang up the intercom. the intercom. 20 minutes go by. Nothing. Absolutely perfect. Not a blank again smoothness glass. Dad picks up the intercom and of course it's the head flight attendant. You know, kid, we get up now. Turns to the captain, the captain says, no, we don't know when we're going to hit it. I'll check turbulence. Right. Not on my watch, not going to let it happen. No, hang up. No, the captain says no, hangs up.

Okay, so this happens another two times. And then like the fourth or fifth time, the flight attendants do that. The captain doesn't say a word, but he just looked, banks, eye contact with my father. Then reaches down, switches off the autopilot, puts his hands on the stick and jogs it. A little bit hard five times to actually cause the airplane to buck and weave. The buck and weave levels out the stick. Flicks the autopilot back on and then turns off the fast and seat belt sign. Doesn't say a word.

Nice. So that is why that is my favorite ever. Okay. For a side cartoon. And it's a good thing my dad never listens to this podcast because he'd be so mad that Well cool, but yeah That that that right there is, but yeah, oh looks like more turbulence kids That that that might actually happen more often than you think mm-hmm. Yeah, I like it all right

All right, well plug social media stuff. All right. Well, if you absolutely, positively, desperately need to find me, you can find me on the Twitter at EH Blalock, which oddly enough is the same place you can find me on TikTok now. Oh, wow. Right now, the only thing I have up on TikTok is a statement in support of my teacher's union. Surprise, surprise.

Yeah. But there are probably, because I'm a Gryffindor and thus a low-key narcissist, there's probably going to be more of me on there soon. If you are looking for me on Instagram, I'm at Mr. MR Blalock. And then of course, you can find us collectively on the Twitter machine at Geek History time. And now if somebody wants to shout specifically at you, where would they go? Well, if you want to take a picture of your far side book and your favorite comic within that

book, you can send it either to at Geek History Time on the Twitter or at Da Harmony, two H's in the middle there, either on the Insta or on the Twitter. So that's where you can find all of that. I'd love to see it. Love when people share their favorites. So, yes, definitely. So, for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock, and until next time, keep rolling 20s. you