A Geek History of Time - Episode 66 - Far Side of Absurd Government Part IV

Episode Date: August 1, 2020

BELLS Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere. You are destroying the Constitution of the United States may God have mercy on your souls. Good day. Yes. It's a very sad thing. We could be saying that we just elected the right white man to power. That's creepy, but that's a different category of creepy. Zizuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and find out what the fuckin' truth that man was trying to get at. Like with most episodes I can bring him back to wrestling. Oh, right. Well, he's got other people who work for him who also do things.

And they can get new tape, and he can get human size into smaller worlds after all. Fuck you. I still don't give a shit about getting fake property in a fantasy game. This is A.K. History of Time. Where we, shakyly, connect our way to the real world. My name is Ed Lailock. I'm a world history teacher here in Northern California and the very proud father of a two-year-old little boy who has decided that swords are one of his favorite sets of toys and that as a

sword nerd myself that makes me very happy. Now I just need to actually figure out what the proper pedagogy is for teaching teaching a two-year-old to to lead with the edge rather than than the flat and once I figure that out will be will be solid. So that's me. How about you? My name is Damon Harmony. I'm a Latin teacher up here in Northern California. Teaching both my children Latin. She's eight. He's 10. Together they fight crime. In the ancient, ancient world. And actually my son recently had us rewatch episode three of Star Wars.

And he is all about how sad and tragic Order 66 was and just like diving into the tragedy of it all and I'm like oh shit I kind of missed that part yeah that's true it is awful and then and his his takeaway from it was Anakin should have learned to let go of things wow whereas my daughter was analyzing the color scheme of the whole movie and like pointing out Anakin should have learned to let go of things. Wow. Whereas my daughter was analyzing the color scheme of the whole movie. And like pointing out anytime, Anakin was talking about something he shouldn't be half of his face was in shadows. Now, here's a question.

Sure. Have you had any kind of a similar conversation about about the lighting during the climax of a return of the Jedi? No, because that's not the one that we saw, but I bet you that'll come up. I bet you okay Yeah, because you know, of course the iconic moment where you know Lucas is for a moment hiding and trying to gather his Gather his strength right and half half his face is half of his face is in shadow and Vader is, was, yeah, Vader at that point. Yeah, Vader's teasing him basically. Just taunting him.

Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's both of your children are remarkably precocious in very different ways. Yeah. It's really something.

Yeah, it is remarkable to me the extent to which they exemplify different aspects of intelligence. Emotional intelligence versus, you know, linguistic spatial. Yeah, you know, yeah, she absolutely spends all her time above the eyebrows and he spends all his time beneath the sternum. Yeah, you know, it's amazing. Yeah. So they both love the far side though and he's, he loves the slapstick of it and she loves the puns of it. So again, reinforcing that So last we talked Gary Larson was in almost 2000 newspapers

He is subversive without meaning to be because he's poking at our language and at our culture Not even our culture, but like our agreed upon norms. Now I'm gonna fast forward a bit, but you have a quizzical look on your face. Yeah, I want to pick a little bit at what you say about him being subversive without meaning to me. I think I think he did mean to be subversive, but I think we tend to load subversive with meaning that isn't necessarily there. He was trying to be politically subversive. He was not trying to be politically subversive. He was not, yeah, he was being he was not, yeah, he was being kind of ambient subversive, which may not be a good way of describing it, but it was, no, no, let's poke some holes in reality. And as you pointed out last episode and kind of we didn't we didn't sit on it very much

But I think I think it's an important point that his His his his absurdity was a reflection of And simultaneously kind of an escape from pardon me the the background absurdity the the existential

absurdity of what life what was going on in the world yes in the 1980s and and it was I Yes. In the 1980s. And it was, I think, on a subconscious level, part of the reason it was so popular was because, as with so many other, you know, works that we've discussed, it brought up the things that people were anxious about it brought up that that absurdity that that incoherent, incoweight kind of formless level of the world is just fucking bonkers man. Yeah. And and allowed readers to point and laugh at it. I think he was subversive in the same way that the gesture is subversive. Yes.

Yes. Without, but he allowed us to do that. He allowed readers to point and laugh at the absurdity of our world without us ever having to consciously accept that it was our world that we were laughing at. Yeah, he did not take it to the degree that Mad Magazine took it quite honestly. Well, okay, Mad Magazine was straight up culturally and political satire. Yeah.

Like, I wound up minding... But it's on the same vein, though. It's, look how silly this is. Yeah, well, yeah, Larsen stops there But mad magazines look how silly this is and by the way look at where you're standing Yeah, well, yeah one one one look where you're standing number two All of these people are hypocrites. Yes, and we're gonna call them out by name for being hypocrites. Yes, and you know

You know, we're gonna we're gonna point out to you that, you know, anybody who tries to tell you anything is trying to sell you something. And now buy our magazine. And now buy our magazine. Yeah. And we're gonna be blatant about it. And now buy our magazine. Yeah.

You know, yeah. And so it's, they exist on a continuum. You know, and political cartoons are actually, I'd say, on a set of axes. Like, you know, seriousness versus, you know, uh, uh, uh, Juvenility or, or yeah, seriousness versus versus Juvenility and, and, you know, pointed, you know, calling people out versus background, you know, background subversion. Yeah. And yeah. So yeah, no, I think, I think, I think subversive is a really good word for what he did, but

it's a very different kind of subversive. Yes. Yes. Then it was normally think of. It was the, what was interesting about it is that it was far more acceptable subversion than the other tools of subversion that were out there in the same genre even. He was universally more appreciated across both aisles up and down, you know, the X, Y axis as well, then was Dune's Berry.

Yeah. Well, because, again, Dune's Berry was coming from a very specific political direction. Yes. And during, certainly during Reagan's time in office, you know, yeah, it was really clear where, I've just completely forgotten the name of the author of Dunesbury, but it was really clear where that comic strip was coming from. And so it was partisan, whereas what Larsen was doing wasn't even in any way overtly political at all. So it was a lot more palatable to everybody.

Yeah, it was Gary Trudeau, by theatable. Yeah. Two A for everybody. Yeah, it was Gary Trudeau, by the way. So. Thank you. All right, so fast forward for a little bit. In 2017, well after Larson has retired, Kelly Baum, Baum, B-A-U-M. I'm going to say Baum, because the Latinist and me,

she exhibited absurdist art from around the world at a art gallery. And here is a quote from, I believe, the program. She after 1950. Practicing hysteria, stimulating mania, and cultivating lunacy were ways of revolting against an oppressive rationalism, she said. So she's doing this in 2017, okay, point out the specific year that she puts out this and there were over a hundred pieces I want to say of absurdist art. She and many other artists lay the horrific effects of hyperrational politics, which created a manic state of reality. At our feet, and she says, quote, Delirium was one of the defining experiences

of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and it gave rise to delirious forms of art. She says this. Now notice what decade is exempt from that. Okay. But I would say that in the 1980s, they doubled down on it and gave us Gary Larson. Okay.

Baum continues. Okay. Yeah. In the hands of institutions like governments and corporations, spoken and written language served only to persuade any lude, not to enliven and galvanize. And she goes on to say that in 2017, and there's no reason to think that it's any different at the time of this podcast,

propaganda is still king. Yeah. It's slam dunk. Yeah, can't argue it. Speaking of the now, the far side, as I said at the very beginning of the episodes, is back. And it's exactly this return that spawned this podcast. Why did the far side come back now?

Why now? Why not 10 years ago? Why not 10 years from now? Specifically, why January of 2020? I went to the man's words himself, Gary Larson. He said that he started liking drawing again because he bought a tablet. That's all. Yeah, well okay. There's more to it than that, but he does give that answer in the New York Times. So when people ask him, hey, why are you coming back now? I

think a lot of people are kind of like what's going on Gary. And some people just, you know, can lazily point out 40-year anniversary. Cool. But he's like, oh yeah, no, I can draw better. It's nicer. But he also wrote an open letter to us explaining his return. And in it, yes, technology was part of it, but the other part he says here, quote, years ago, when I slowly started realizing I had a second publisher and distributor of my work known as anyone with a scanner and associates,

I did find it unsettling enough to write an open letter to whom it may concern, explaining best as I could why I preferred that the people doing this would kindly refrain. Basically he didn't like that people were taking his intellectual property and pushing it into realms that he had and agreed to. That totally makes sense as an artist, right? And a lot of folks were very enthusiastic fans and he said, I felt bad telling somebody who is just a really good fan. But at the same time, that's my stuff.

Please don't do that. I mean, honestly, hell, I belong to three far-side appreciation groups on Facebook. Here's more of what he says. Quote, my change of heart on this has been due not only to some evolution in my own thinking, but also in two areas I've always cared about when it comes to this computer internet stuff. Security and graphics. He goes on. Trying to exert some control over my cartoons has always been an uphill slog, and I've sometimes wondered if my absence

from the web may have inadvertently fueled someone's belief of my cartoons were up for grabs. They're not, but it's always been inherently awkward to chase down a farside festoon website when the person behind it is often simply just a fan. And then he puts in parentheses, although not everyone is quite so uncomplicated in their motives, my cartoons have been taken up or have been taken and used to help sell everything from donuts to rodent control, at least I offer range. So I'm hopeful that this official website will help temper the impulses of the infringement and client. So ultimately that's why he's back to protect where

and how his cartoons are used. Simple artistic desire to protect what he's worked on. Okay. But as we often say, authorial intent doesn't mean squat when it's cast against the silhouette of the zeitgeist. So here's my theory. And I got permission from the authors to share it. Bonnie Burton said in an article from CNET on December 16, 2019, she says, but at a time where tragedy and cruelty

seem to dominate headlines, one thing is certain. We could use Larsen's oddball humor now more than ever. The far side pointed out the ludicrous side of being human and the secret genius of animals. So yeah, he came back to protect his stuff, but at the same time, look at when he popped onto the scene the first time and look at what he's popping on now. Yeah, we live in the, yeah. Well, I want to hold off on my take until we hear what you could sound like you said, the authors. So is there another, is there another pull quote you've got? Not for a little bit.

So. So then I'm gonna jump in with this one then. Sure. We are officially inescapably now living in a post-truth environment. Even that phrase is fucking absurd. Yeah, yes. That's. It is. And the thing is, we are in an environment where the president of the United States and his administration are making pronouncements about reality repeatedly, all the time, that are patently and patently false and easily disproven, but they keep

doing it. They've literally done it since inauguration. Well, I mean, yes, it's the campaign. Yeah. No, I mean, actually saying that there were more people than were there. And when they were showing the pictures, they were like, yeah, see, there's more people.

And it's like, how? What are you looking at? Are we looking at the same picture? Do you know what object permanency is, sir? Yeah. Well, you know, he hates that cognitive test they gave him that's true that's true true you know did did remarkably well on it like you know people can't believe it never people couldn't people couldn't believe it like okay I'm sorry if they're giving you a cognitive test as part of your physical,

that's something we as the American people need to fucking know about, like, the fact they're giving you the test. They gave McFoolie a cognitive test to see if he'd had too many concussions. Not just for funsies. No. Yeah. Like, let's take a look at this real, like, for real. This is not something, this is not a part of a normal physical.

I didn't have to put names under pictures of animals as part of my last physical. Like I was not timed in taking a look at, figuring out a linkage between numbers and letters. Like, no, they only do that if somebody's worried. Yeah. So funny that you would bring that up. Because in 1980, we elected a man president.

This is so much, anything that's happened before it's happened again and will happen again. The only difference is a difference of degree and it's not even that much a difference of degree unfortunately the the acuity is but we have again gone from a president who is incredibly intelligent and compassionate despite the demands of his office and it's no secret that i have tremendous trouble with what he's done to brown people throughout the world, by the way, the former president Obama, and how much he shorted black folks here at home. But he was a very intelligent and compassionate man at the same time. If you look at his

reaction to Sandy Hook, Stray von Martin, and the pulse shooting, you can see his a man of tremendous compassion and decency. And so was Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter is still building homes for people and will probably do it until the day he dies. And he keeps teasing us with that because he keeps falling down and getting hurt. And yet the next day he's back out there broken hip and all swing in a hammer. Anyway, so we went from that kind of a man to a media-based white older man who made angry people feel justified. Both Spoken slogans, both used tough man rhetoric, neither knows fuck all how anything works, and they think that just by force of

personality and bully pulpit boilerplate rhetoric that they can affect change that their base is wanting damn the costs. Both are huge friends to the ultra rich, both pretended to be the image that they're most seen as a tough guy or a rich guy. Both are literally the opposite of what they profess to be, Reagan never passed a single balanced budget despite being an alleged fiscal conservative, and Trump can't figure out which way the Bible goes. Moreover, both of them essentially did their due diligence when it came to

harming marginalized folks, either by ignoring them as Reagan did with the AIDS crisis, and by cutting taxes to help stop them from going to the pores, or by represencing rights finally given to people, instituting travel bands, separating over 70,000 children from their parents, refusing to act during the times that would have helped during COVID, encouraging actual violence, validating Nazis, et cetera, as Trump has.

So we were living in very similar times, and both times under similar conditions, certain things came back. Gary Larson's subversive absurdism and his cartoons seems to be one of those things. Okay. Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think we... I think everything that you point out about Reagan is, I mean, supported. None of those accusations are deeply flawed. the overtness of the hatred is a new thing. I think the degree is different. I don't think the kind is because I think about

Amy Grant and her anti-homosexual campaign. Amy Grant, no, Anita Bryant. Sorry, Amy Grant and her anti-homosexual campaign. Amy Grant, no, Anita Bryant. Sorry, Amy Grant. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. See who else I can accuse on this, you know, you know, but yeah, no, Anita Bryant, no, you're not wrong.

And Reagan going and validating those people with his presence as the president, as the commander-in-chief, standing next to people who absolutely, and again, you and I were children. But I can almost guarantee you gay people who were in their prime probably saw it differently than we did. Black people in the neighborhoods where crack was being led in because of all of our north and because of Reagan's policies. You know, like, like, there's so much there that I would say, no, all of that was really fucking mean too. The difference is the mouth

was not as frothy when Reagan did it. And that's, that's kind of what I'm saying. Yeah. That's essentially what I'm saying. And I think the... When Reagan got elected, and when Reagan got reelected, the, the, the tone for lack of a better word, but the, the, the message was he's, he's going to build us up. Right. Right. It's going to build us up. The message with Trump is, I'm going to hurt the right people. I alone can fix this. I yes. Yes, very much. You definitely placed himself as a savior.

But you're right. But it's an overt. First off, it's an overt. I am your savior, which is terrifying language to come from an elected official. And it is Reagan-Dogwistled, whereas the current administration has not bothered to dog whistle. Yeah, they both. Because, yeah, because the base for both of them is the same base, but that base has aged by 40 years. Yep, and the So they're they're they're four years older and the world has changed in ways that that are

demographically terrifying to them Mm-hmm And so their motivation has gone from being concerned about National malaise and this guy we've got being you you know, getting attacked by a rabbit, you know. Right. You know, and, you know, we gotta be strong, we gotta be strong to now being overtly, we had to put up with a black man in the White House.

Right. And so now we're going to get even. Yeah. There's, so I'm going to push back a little bit just because I know under Reagan, we actually closed the Mexican border to America. And prior to that, we had circular migration. It was zero problems. Yeah.

Now, some of that's who he put in charge, but also he was absolutely playing to that nationalistic base. Oh, yeah. Being a man from Southern California as well. But I would say that under Reagan, all the policies were virtually the same. Under Trump, there is, and I would say that they were policies aimed at rich white folks shoring up their power and protecting what power they had. Whereas now there is a level of lashing out. They're no longer protecting anything. They're

lashing out and that's a very different focus, to say, the policies, interestingly, are still startlingly similar though. And that should be cause for policy. Yeah, no, I don't think, yeah, no, I don't think, I don't think, on a policy level, there's, yeah, I don't think we disagree on that at all. Big oil,

trying to actively derail, attempts to combat climate change. Yes, I mean, Reagan literally is not there with IACOCA and a bunch of other guys taking off the solar panels on the top of the White House. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, no, the policies aren't different, but it's now there, all of that has had 40 years to fester and become, as you say, and go from, we're gonna defend the rights and the perque visits and the privileges of the most privileged to now being the base has now determined that

they need to lash out. And that quote, you keep mentioning when we talk about this, you know, he's not hurting the right people. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Is... Yeah, chilling. So anyway, carry on. So in the 1980s, Jean Baudre-Lard, I think that's how you pronounce his name.

It seems French, it reads French, but I speak Latin. He took the baton from Jacques Derrida in Michel Foucault, and when it came to this idea of semiotics, which is essentially the study of signs and their meanings. He carried forth the idea of post-structuralism, that signification and meaning are both only understandable in terms of how particular words or signs interrelate with each other.

Thus, meaning is brought about through a system of signs working together, not the individual signs per se. Meeting is set in opposition to its opposite. So a corn dog doesn't have any meaning per se until you categorize it as being not hamburger, not salad, not chocolate bar, etc., etc. until you've eliminated all the other possibilities so that now you know what a corn dog really is. Okay, so if you say corn dog, what you're really saying is it's not all these other things. It's not B through Z, it's A. So A is defined as being not B through Z.

It cannot exist on its own, but in opposition to all that it isn't, okay? So my salt shaker, there's no meaning to that unless you look at it in context of all the things that it isn't. It's not a pencil sharpener, it's not a dog. It's not, it's not a whole bunch of things that I can see. And then it eliminates it down to being a salt shaker. So there's more that gets into this, but I want to get into what he did in the 80s, okay?

He said, this is, this is Bauder alert. Yeah, you had a question? No, no, I'll just wrapping my head around. Yeah, what you were just saying. So, all right. So, in the 1980s, he said that we are all living in a hyper reality where we were all simulation based on simulacra. We're all reference and no actual reference. And in an increasingly technological society, that would actually continue.

He disagreed with Fukuyama, who said that we had entered into the end of history as a culmination of historical development. He said rather that we'd done so as a collapsing of all historical development. So it wasn't this culmination so much as it was, we collapsed in on ourselves. We had gone to the point where the meanings of things and the reality itself was based entirely on the image of what we believed, not on the actual reality. Okay. Here's a quote.

The end of history. Oh yeah. Okay. Here's a quote. The end of his oh yeah. Okay. No, just where we're kind of bouncing off of the back wall of Plato's cave with this. Yes. Quite so. Okay. Yeah. And you're saying that that's the reality we live in. Just wanted to make sure that. Okay. Yeah. Right. So the end of history, here's a quote. the end of history is alas also the end of the dust bans of history There are no longer any dust bans for disposing of old ideologies old regimes or old values We are what where we are going to throw off Marxism which actually invented the dust bans or I'm sorry

Where are we going to throw Marxism which actually invented the dustbin of history? And then in parentheses he says, yet there is some justice here since the very people who invented them have fallen in. Conclusion, if there are no more dustbin of history, this is because history itself has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin. So to refresh, nothing has any meaning, and we're all playacting the meaning out, being led by a president who's playing at being a president, and Gary Larson is showing us the absurdity of it all by creating juxtapositional elegance in single-panel comics. Okay, there's no part of that train of logic that I can assail with anything.

Okay. And now here we are with what was, according to Baudrillard, a hyperreality, quote, these go to 11. I just, I needed to quote Rob right over there. Or actually, you guys forget technically. Nobody in the 1980s believed that universal values were in fact universal, but they were, and they are still rhetorically employed to justify otherwise unjustifiable choices. Here's one for you.

Greed works. Greed is good. So we live in a slogan reality. And it's like we've gone into a cocaine-induced fever dream version of that 11 status from the 1980s in an effort to reanimate Nietzsche's corpse because we really dug the will to power idea after all. Another author. Which Nietzsche would be in a hurry to say, that's not actually what I was trying to tell you.

Yeah, like, no, just hate women, it's okay. It's just you. It's just you. Yeah, well, yeah. Not where I was going, but yeah. It's where he was. Again, I can't sail that. Yeah.

So another author, a geocomagia, G-I-U-A. Here's an Italian name. Again, I know Latin. Characterize a burial art this way." He said, quote, signs and symbols replacing our experience of reality with a construct tailored to the human being. With this extended reality now closely aligned to advertising and stereotyped mass culture, it becomes clear that technology has become widely misused. Instead of a functioning as a resource

to help us compensate for our lack, it has become a vehicle for media to bombard users with messages designed to create false needs. And how could we engage in a meaningful analysis of our lives, a requirement in Camus absurdity of life, when the mass cultural messages that pervade our reality are telling you the exact opposite. So we're through the looking loss, essentially.

And he goes on, he says, through technology, the media machine has modified our perception of solitude. Fear of missing out has become a key theme of our time, which is really interesting in the time of COVID, actually. This constant engagement with others, this constant engagement with others denies us precious time for thinking about our lives, our society. Without time and space to think we cannot confront the unresonableness of society. A dilute thought is already available just to click away. And I would say if he wrote this a little bit later,

he would have said just a swipe away. Yeah. I can see that. I, you know, the, the, I think it could be worth studying the semionotics of meme culture. And the medical ignition involved in all of that. And when you were talking about the quote there're not, we're not able to reflect as can be required as to do because culture is actively pushing us not to. One of my drama coaches in high

school had as one of her absolute pet peeves was, do you remember Bud dry? I do do. The ads for that? Okay. It was, it was, I was flashing the pan thing back, some place in the early 90s. And, and the tagline was, why ask why? Try Bud dry. I do remember that. And and and she I remember vividly. She had a in one of our rehearsal prep sessions about you have to ask why? Why is the most important

question always asked? Wow. Wow. Yeah. And I mean, in her case, in her case, of course, she was specifically talking about Stanislavsky and Method and why is my character doing this? What's my, you know, but, but on a, on a, on a much broader scale. Um, it's, it's, you know, it, it gets back to, you know, if, if you're ever going to be able to genuinely give your life, meaning asking why is crucial. Yes. Not, not just not just as a theater exercise, but for everything. And you know, you don't

think about the culture actively, mass culture actively pushing us not to do that, but it literally does. Right. In that case, like you can't get more literal than that. You know, and and fear of missing out and and everything, everything else that he was, he was talking about about, you know, social interaction, all this stuff. You know, it's interesting that there's a lot of introvert, extravert kind of dynamic going on there. In the idea of, you know, our culture is driven by obsessive extroversion. And it was not until I was in my late 30s that the idea of extroversion, introversion gained enough traction

thanks to the internet, that I actually heard from friends of mine who I'd known since high school or since college, that no, no, being an introvert sometimes feels like being kind of no of having a sit and kind of have an uncomfortable listen to the lived experience of people I knew. You know, I mean, not on the same level or degree as, you know, people of color, or non-hett, non-sist people.

But still, the cultural defaults are extrovert. And when you're not an extrovert, that creates a dichotomy or a separation that can be jarring, that can be hurtful. And, you know, when especially when the culture has to take an extra version to a degree that is toxic. Yeah. Pushes and doesn't merely value extra version more, but actively pushes extra version. Yeah, and there's this urgency to it, and to me, it feels like you're on a treadmill, and somebody's just been slowly tapping the plus one over time to the point where you're running to exhaustion and then suddenly the power went out and you have to stop running. And then like the people who didn't want to run in the first goddamn place, they just wanted to walk. They're like, oh shit, right, I get to just sit still now for a minute. And now all of us are like, did I have to run that hard?

You know, it's, it's, you know, yeah, here's the thing. And you know, and that leads me to an observation that, you know, we are hearing an awful lot in the media right now from and about, you know, all of the people who are, oh my God, I've been stuck in the house for a month. And oh my God, I got to get out. I want to go to a restaurant.

I want to go get my hair done. I want to go to this dad and the other thing. Oh my God, I got to go to a bar. And you know, I'm, I literally, literally, like every time I've taken the Myers-Briggs personality assessment, the MBTI, every time I've taken that, the, I'm either an ESFP or an ESFJ,

depending on the phase of the moon. My perceiving versus judging kind of shifts back and forth. But the ESF part is solid and the extrovert part, I ping the needle. Yeah. Like I am a massive, massive extrovert. And after being in quarantine for a month and a half, of two months, whatever, however long it was,

we were here because time has ceased to have meaning. You know, I would like to get to a place where I could, you know, visit with my college buddies again. I would like to get to a place where I could take my son to the Children's Museum rather than having to time our outings to the early morning. So as not to wilt under the baleful gaze of a hateful sun now that it's July. You know, being able to go someplace that would be air conditioned and have all kinds of stuff for them to do would be awesome, but you know, but you know as much as I would like to do those things, I'm not in a huge hurry to do this frenzy. Oh my god, we gotta go out and go out and go and raise it. I gotta get my haircut.

And I genuinely think that the people we're hearing about who are doing that, who are losing it like that, are some combination of politically motivated. And they are, I think, I think they are, they are genuinely an overly loud minority. I really don't think there are that many people who are in that big hurry to get back to normal just to get back to normal. Yeah, I think most people are looking to reassert what normal actually should be for them. I think it's a wonderful opportunity that we have in front of us.

Unfortunately, history has shown that we don't take good advantage of those things. So, a dilute thought. Oh, yeah. A dilute thought is just to click away as is what he says right now. I want you to Yeah, let that settle in as we realize that we have a president now who Announces actual policy high rings and firings and signals to his gen dorms when and where to attack via Twitter and arms went and were to attack via Twitter. Had Reagan been alive today, he'd likely be using the same exact tools but in a slightly

nicer more polite way which reminds me of Sart's polite occupiers. This world is, by that analysis, exceedingly absurd. Technology has merged with the human tendency toward deadly rationalism to create a world in which absurdity reigns, and we are all puppets on a string playing along sending memes back and forth to each other. And memes while dank are similar to Larsen's art. Well, the dankest ones are... Yes. Well, the thankest ones are their single panel or a single panel divided into a few to give a sense of progression.

For instance, the young man yelling at the old man and somebody throws a chair with the cat. The tuddles. Oh, right. The tuddles. Sure. That's the family's tuddles. So no wonder Gary Larson's back his art form has been a popular one for quite some time now on social media

We summoned him Hannah Hannah's detected. Yeah Hannah Steinkopf Frank wrote an article for in these times, a couple years ago, bringing back Ubu Roy. Quote, the titular figure of Ubu popularized by anti-fascist artists in the 20th century is experiencing a sudden afterlife in the age of Trump. And she goes on to explain that a playwright named Paula Vogel issued a challenge to write a five-page sketch about Trump, setting it in the Ubu Roy verse, quote, because of its timely and timeless themes of greed, narcissism, and violence.

She also notes the striking similarities between King Ubu and President Donald Trump, including their oversized personas, odd use of language, Vogel encouraged playwrights to include the word Kofifi. Um, Steinkoff Frank goes on. She says most significantly, most significantly, Jerry's Ubu Roy set the stage for the theater of the absurd, which as a critic, as critic Martin Eslan put it, uses theater to quote, shock its audience out of complacency. And that comes back to your drama teacher

being the one talking about authenticity, asking why and whatnot, because theater is inherently inauthentic. And yet it gets at something that's so true and real about us. Again, it's that weirdness. She says that Vogel's efforts were to affect change throughout comedy and whimsy. Observe, though, not satire. And I'm going to come back to that in a second. First Vogel is

quoted, quote, the truth of the matter is the most effective tool for despots and tyrants is ridicule. Says Vogel. The most successful tool is comedy. Comedy stings more, I think, than tragedy does. is comedy. Comedy stings more, I think, than tragedy does. I think this is time, I think this is the time for us to get out our clown shoes and our puppets and our marionettes and mock, mock, mock the king. Now, we've talked about this before. Satire doesn't work for reasons that we've discussed any number of times. Absurdism actually might. So that brings me to Gary Larson. Why now and why this year? Sat real quick. Yeah. You mentioned, you know, again, that, you know, satire doesn't work for reasons we've discussed. I actually found a Facebook group that you've probably seen me share a couple of things from. That is, we have murdered satire and we sit atop its corpse like a throne.

Ha ha ha. Yeah. That's, yeah. Well, satire had four years to topple Trump already. One year to prevent him and we're three years in on the Mad King's reign. Satire is not getting the job done These are absurd times

thoroughly absurd times and so now we have people making the argument that the economy is more important than people's lives again And the call has gone out culturally for a return of one of our greatest absurdist artists who showed us the same thing 40 years ago for a return of one of our greatest absurdist artists who showed us the same thing 40 years ago. The far side is not about Cicifus, like Kemu would probably want it to be. The far side is about the audience being a neus. We are faithful to the signs that Baudry Lard says are simulacra. We cling to those. We are faithful to the hope and the optimism that Sartre continues to nourish, no matter how bad things get, we are faithful in our refusal to revolt, leading to the liberation and passion that Kamu louts. We are faithful in our

refusal to recognize the absurdity of language, clinging instead to it through satire and social media arguments. Ian Esco, Camu ultimately and Jerry, would side with Gary Larson's unconscious efforts to highlight the absurd. You pick a cartoon of his, and you'll almost always be transported to the middle of the Leprever sticks, even though Uranius. And that's where Larson's sensibilities lay. He's not telling us what to choose or what our morality should be like Hemu or Sart did.

He's telling us that in the presence of such important decisions and choices, E and S go was right. We're puppets playing with words that only make sense because we let them make sense, which means that the rest of this makes sense because we let it make sense. But none of it this makes sense because we let it make sense, but none of it really makes sense. Okay. So, of course, the far side is back.

Okay. Yeah. We made it necessary by not learning from it the first time around. The only difference is that our collective nihilism is universally less gleeful. Now we are unable to ignore what many people were dealing with under Reagan. There was a huge plague that was attacking an entire segment of the population. We could all safely ignore because they were marginalized. Now it's everyone. We're absurd in our inability to confront our grossest selves, and instead,

we choose to elect the most cartoonishly worst version of ourselves to the highest office of the land. It's really a case of bummer of a birthmark howl meets midville school for the gift. Yeah. And 135,000 people have died from something we could have prevented. Yeah. Yeah. And that's absurd. So yeah, that's why Gary Larson came back. Yeah.

And so, so that is my thesis. Yeah. Yeah, I think I, I blew my, I, yeah, I, I used up my powder on earlier remarks. I can't, in this moment, I can't really think of very much to add to that. It's a weird feeling when you paint yourself into a corner and you're like, oh shit, I didn't like this pattern at all.

It's like, oh god. Why did I do plastic? How did I get here yeah yeah why did I do that plan right plan depending on the tartan hey you know I know I know you're in the corner by the pantry you're like shit yeah what possessed me to go with McLeod of school with loud McLeod? Yeah, as the patterner was going to pick small, why did I do that? Now I have a migraine and I can see the color through my eyelids.

Oh God, oh God. You know, um, you know, I think I think the one thing, the one thing that occurs to me now, you're talking about we can no longer ignore the problems that we're facing, that previously the stuff that was being done was and I think, I think there's a call in that for stern optimism, because part of what we are facing up to, and part of what we are busy throwing dank memes back and forth that one another about on the seminal, you know, you know, social media sites. Right. Or are the genuine problematic things that that we were letting that we were allowing to remain

in the background before the entire, like the whole Black Lives Matter movement and the extent to which that has now actually gained a measure of actual meaningful attention from zoomers and gen-exers and, you know, white people. I think, yeah, it's like, oh my god, the world sucks because now we're seeing all this stuff now. But I think the fact that we can't ignore it anymore shows that the generations who've come since the have a more universal sense of compassion. Yeah. And, and are not going to sit on that shit anymore. And, and are not buying into the hypocrisy and the bullshit of, of the people who came before them on it. And, you know, I posted about this on Facebook the other day, over the

4th of July weekend, my family and I went down to San Diego to visit with my parents. And before we went down, my wife got tested because she had a cough and her job required her to get a COVID test to continue working. And my folks got a COVID test, or my mother got a COVID test. And of course, if my wife tests negative, then I got to be negative because there's no way I could be positive and she's not and vice versa with my dad. And so, you know, we got a clean bill of health and we clean bill of health and, and we were very careful about going anywhere and asking a lot of stuff. But anyway, we went out of visit my folks. And I've spoken before about, you know, growing up in Reagan country, in, in a suburb in, in San Diego, California, neighborhood cults, scripts ranch. And it is, it is, it is very white people, very intense white people, and middle class to comfortably, you know, I don't think we

had any one per setters, but we probably had some four per setters, you know, at the upper end of the pecking order in my neighborhood. And in my neighborhood, what struck me was that there were multiple black lives matter lawn signs. Interesting. throughout my neighborhood. Black Lives Matter in scripts ranch was the sign that somebody had clearly made a whole bunch of them and a whole bunch of people would put them out on their front lawns. And on the fence outside my elementary school, somebody had put up a very, very large poster.

Actually, one of them was just Black Lives Matter, and the other one was listing names of people who'd been killed by the police, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and etc. And that was up there. Now some asshole had shown up and exed both of the posters out what this spray paint can. But the fact still remains, it was up there. The fact still remains. Well number one, the fact still remains that it was up there and either the person who had put it up or somebody else then went in and over

over the lines of the black X, they then painted BLM, BLM, BLM, BLM over the whole thing. So there there was there was this memetic argument. Nice. Going on over this. And the thing is, if scripts ranch white people are convinced enough of something to risk getting into an argument with their neighbors by putting up that sign, I think there's reason to hope that things are gonna get better. Okay.

Stern optimism. Well, the Stern part comes in the, and the very fact that I know you're doing this, but that it's our job to make it better. We have to take ownership and actually do it. And I know that you and I line up philosophically. I do find it interesting though that while I don't disagree with any of that, there is a lot of engagement with single panel stuff, even TikTok itself by its very nature. I mean, you're watching short scenes even TikTok itself by its very nature. I mean, you're watching short scenes on a single panel. Yeah. You know, people are trading memes have been for years,

and it seems to be increasing again with what a Bauderay-Lard had said about the semiotics, and with what we're talking about with, you know, the very meaning of language, it's because we're giving it that meeting. I mean, you literally have people saying black lives matter and then other people going, well, what about blue lives?

And it's like, oh, were those under threat? Like, so there's people arguing the meaning of things and trying to redefine things and other folks are saying, no, you don't get to redefine that. But we're still arguing over images in Simulacra in a lot of ways where other people are arguing on a very existential level of like, no, no, I'd like to not die today.

And so you've got all of that soup happening. And I think that is what has made such fertile ground for the absurdity that Gary Larson brings out. Yeah. And well, and it's interesting that our political discourse is going the way of Darmak and Jalata Tanagra. Because there's a guy I follow on Facebook who is an information, he's basically an info warfare guy.

He is one of these people. He is somebody you want to talk to if you are trying to really analyze and really put together a plan for communicating an idea and getting buy in. He knows how that works. He is an info warrior like that.. Yeah, it's an actual. No, no, he's he's he is he is an actual like no, no. And and he's he's being very transparent right now about a mimetic campaign. He is working on to try to build a mask wearing as a behavior. to build a mask wearing as a behavior. Nice. Going so far as to give these lengthy posts about, okay, look, here's how all the Facebook numbers break down about how I can target the people I'm looking for. I'm not actually trying to

I'm not trying to get anybody who is, you know, avidly anti-mask. I'm not trying to reach them because I'm not going to convince them. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get to the, you know, college student in a liberal, you know, college town in Red Flyover State, you know, and I'm trying to get them to then pick up this meme and share it and spread it to try to build, you know, I'm trying to find the cool kids and get them to then spread this and build this out and then turn this into something that will lead to, you know, behavioral changes. And talking about the construction of memetics, and the construction of getting an idea and putting a specific set of words together

to get that reaction is an interesting kind of applied semiotics exercise. You know, in that it's the juxtaposition again of words and an image to elicit a specific kind of response. And he's spent a lot of time talking about how he's trying to find the people he's trying to reach with it. And you know, it's a peak behind the curtain of when you are intentionally trying to do this, how much work can go into it. And at the same time, there's an awful lot of stuff that happens that's just somebody trying to be clever and throwing something together that then goes viral. You know, and trying to analyze it sometimes destroys the magic. So I had a point I directed off of it, I don't remember where I was trying to go with it, but

when we're talking about the one panel format and the absurdity of all of our communication being this meta functionality. It's interesting to see that actually being actively developed and actively worked on. Yeah, consciously so. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, cool. So, Gary Larson's back. That's a wonderful thing for comedy. A terrible sign for our existence. Yeah. The website that he's back on, by the way, is just the farside.com. There is a shop on it. There is a daily dose of new comics. I'm going to tell you one. I will describe it to you, and this is what I recommend. I honestly just recommend people go check out the daily dose on the far side this week.

And there's a gentleman trying to hail a cab. And well, it appears as though it's trying to hail a cab and well it appears as though it's trying to hail a cab there's a whole bunch of Traffic and there's one truck that is filled with stuffed animals Animals that have clearly been shot killed and stuffed and the guy hailing it says taxi dermis Yeah, I saw that one yeah, so good stuff. I saw that one. Yeah, so it's good stuff. I saw that one immediately thought of you. Yep.

So anyway, that's what I'm recommending. Yeah. Do you have any recommendations or do you want to just get to the social needs? No, I don't, right now I don't have a recommendation of anything. I think just getting to where anybody can reach us to tell us how Kemo and Sarch were entirely wrong in Kierkegaard is the way in the light. I think it's probably our best bet at this point. And so I'll start.

probably are best bet at this point. And so I'll start if you want to try to tell me what my point was a minute ago. When I got rambling, you can reach me at eHBlalock on Twitter, on Instagram and on TikTok. I am MrBlalock. They call me Mr. Blaylock. And then of course, if you want to shout at both of us about anything or politely say something rather than shouting, we can collectively be found at Geek History Time on Twitter.

And if they want to hit you up for anything, Damien, where are they going to find you? You can find me at duh harmony on both the Insta and the Twitter. It's duh with two Hs in the middle. You can also find me every Sunday night on Twitch.tv, forward slash calling it in the ring with Johnny Taylor analyzing wrestling matches. And you can also find me at on Tuesday nights on twitch.tv forward slash capital puns with Daniel Humberger and Mark Berg doing a show that we've been doing for four years running now. So that's where you can find me the most. Also, we have started up a TikTok. It's capital puns on TikTok.

So go there, check it out, give it a couple likes, and there will be more content posted there as our shows continue. So yeah, that's about it. What do we do now? Oh yes, for Geek History of Time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blaylock, and until next time, keep rolling 20s.