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Relentless Geekery: Thanksgiving, Geek Culture, and the Mind of Narcissism In this episode of Relentless Geekery, the hosts explore a wide range of topics from seasonal film watching habits and obscure swear words to deeper conversations about the impact of narcissism and faith on personal relationships. They share humorous stories about authors like David Baldacci, delve into the complexities of religious organizations, and even bring up personal anecdotes from their own family lives. There’s also a discussion on current politics, reflections on historical gratitude during Thanksgiving, and a look into the joys of rediscovering comic books after a 20-year hiatus. 00:00 Introduction to Relentless Geekery 00:43 Seasonal Movie Traditions 01:33 Exploring Vulgarity and Swear Words 04:51 Ethics and Morality in Business 07:00 Faith, Religion, and Hypocrisy 17:06 Thanksgiving and Historical Perspectives 22:14 Political Commentary and Cabinet Picks 30:15 Apathy, Narcissism, and Society’s Future 32:38 Facing Consequences: The Inescapable Reality 33:24 Personal Reflections: Dealing with Narcissism 35:32 The Turning Point: A Decision to Part Ways 36:40 A Peaceful Separation: Moving Forward 40:48 Gifts and Thoughtfulness: The Art of Giving 56:03 Rediscovering Comics: A Journey Back 58:43 Concluding Thoughts and Future Plans
[00:00:00] Do you like conversation on a variety of topics? Feel like no one wants to talk about the things that interest you? Tired of only hearing the same political, sports, or catastrophe talk? We feel that way too. Join two high functioning geeks as they discuss just about anything under the sun. We can’t tell you what we’ll be talking about each week because we don’t know where our brains will take us.
It will be an interesting conversation though, so hang on and join us. Here comes the Relentless Geekery.
Stephen: So this is my logic. I’ve been doing the last couple years in September to October, you watch horror movies because it’s Halloween time and in fall, scary, blah, blah, blah. In December, you watch Christmas movies, whether it’s rom coms or whatever other [00:01:00] Christmas movies you enjoy. That leaves November and there’s no, not a lot of really good Thanksgiving movies, but it’s the transition from the horror to the Christmas.
So I always watch Christmas horror movies in November,
Alan: deadly night and Krampus and okay. That makes good sense.
Stephen: Yeah. So that’s Christmas horror, right? I told AI it wouldn’t do Christmas horror, so it did scary Christmas.
Alan: Okay. That’s interesting that it actually rejects certain suggestions but that’s, they got to always be thinking of, it’s got to be safe for the kids.
What’s the first thing you do when you get an unabridged dictionary? Look up the swear words, if
Stephen: you know how to look them up, you already know them. So what are you really saving?
Alan: That’s right. They’re just looking for all the different, I’m sure that. It has 37 different definitions for all the ways in which it is used, yeah,
Stephen: They just go to Google Translate and just ask it for the swear words in all the foreign languages.
So
Alan: exactly. I got it. Every time we bring this up, I got to give a [00:02:00] shout out. People, if you’ve never read Maledicta, if you’ve never even heard of it, it was this guy that did scholarly work into vulgarity, and swearing of the sexual and the fecal and the religious, every way that you could think of it, and it really is fascinating to look at how these things are, how they generate, how like different cultures have different words to come up for it, and how in different cultures or languages certain things are much more taboo than others, and it in the United States, the C word is really a bad word. It really is like a fighting word. And in English, it’s saying you’re a jerk. You know what I mean? Really it’s much lower down on the scale, whereas bloody, we say it because we I heard it in an English movie or saw it on Monty Python, but over there, it’s really crass.
So I like to be able to offend people in 17 different languages.
Stephen: And see I’ve had this idea and I should implement just because it’s fun is go find old, like Victorian swear words and put them on t [00:03:00] shirts because nobody gets offended anymore because they don’t know what they mean.
But, you could
Alan: be swearing in Victorian. You know what’s funny is, and Kelly and I have talked about this I’ve received occasionally a gift that has swear words on it, a t shirt, and I really don’t like that. When I said before about I want to be able to offend, no, it’s more I want to be able to express, and Offending people where you just walk up and before you even have your feel for how you’re going to participate in the conversation, your shirt is already for the blue noses really gotten them on edge.
And I just don’t like that. I like it to be my choice. Not I bought a shirt and now everybody has to deal with it a thing. And
Stephen: the people that Do where that and somebody gets upset. They’re like Hey lady, then just don’t look at it. This is freedom of speech. Okay. Actually you’re misinterpreting the freedom of speech in the constitution.
That just shows you’ve never actually studied this and you’re, lower on the monkey totem pole there. But I agree. I don’t see the point in doing something that you know, is [00:04:00] going to offend somebody and you’re doing it just for that. That’s
Alan: It’s the same series when people have a tattoo and they see you looking at and what are you looking at?
It’s like the tattoo that you obviously got so that we would all notice that you’re not fooling anybody, and going back for a moment. But the only T shirt I’ve ever had that I thought I might be willing to wear was in a little tiny print. It says. Nosey little fucker, aren’t ya? So yeah, you have to lean in and really peer at it to be able to see it.
And then there’s a joke payoff. It’s not just a fence, it’s making fun of the fact that, I don’t know, I still don’t do it. I just don’t like to same shit different day. I actually wait at the turn of the millennium. I thought I could make a fortune going same shit different millennium And I just couldn’t do it because I couldn’t order shirts that say shit on them.
I just
Stephen: didn’t do
Alan: that,
Stephen: Casey had the suggestion, why don’t not all these craft shows for the last year and a half? Why don’t we sell like Trump and MAGA gear? We’d make a [00:05:00] killing. I’m like, I can’t support that to make money. It’s not, it feels slimy.
Alan: Honestly. And we’d often talk about this.
I’m doing well in investing again. I’m climbing back up to where I had my previous high, like four years ago before COVID and other things contributed to the downfall. But I still, no matter what good recommendation I get, I’m not buying into a vice company. I don’t want to own any cigarettes. I don’t want to own any gambling.
I don’t want to own any determined to extend the life of fossil fuels when it’s killing the planet. I just, there’s Many other choices, many other ways to make money and to vote with your dollars, and it, I don’t know, everybody has their, I don’t go into what we, what they often call social cause funds, where I don’t have a, an ETF that is only those things, because I don’t know that I agree with that fully either.
You shouldn’t have to, you of course should do business well, but I don’t know. I don’t know that I, there’s a sliding scale of what is good versus bad. And there’s a whole bunch of stuff in the middle that isn’t either of [00:06:00] that. It’s just, Hey man, we make plungers. You know what I mean? What if you really find that offensive or inoffensive or whatever I don’t there’s a lot of ways to talk about this.
There are so many companies now that do many things, not just one thing. So if you buy into and, but you don’t want to do it because, Hey, they also make You name it suicide pods, and you don’t agree with suicide, but then you’re giving up on all the good that GE does with making aerospace stuff and engines for planes that keep us all being able to fly around the world.
So that, that kind of mixed bag thing, and having said that, I wonder how many companies actually do that. They sit there at the board meeting and go we’re really getting, taken to task because we support tobacco, but hey, if we have aloe vera, I guess that makes up for it. And they make their own.
Portfolio so that they escape the people that are after them for right. You make DDT.
Stephen: You make Yamaha. They always crack me up. I can get Yamaha symbols, Yamaha bases, and Yamaha motorcycles, it’s
Alan: [00:07:00] another. I remember going to I’m a futurist in many ways. I really think the world gets continually better, and mostly because we learn more and apply science and so forth.
So why has our lifespan expanded so much in the last century? Not because of the power of prayer, because we decided that we should have fluoridated water and clean air, and then when you see that they actually become opposed. It really weirds me out to be like, wow, what? You must see this like I do all the time.
Some just got through an 18 hour operation and teams of doctors saved his life. They think it was their thoughts and prayers that did it. It’s like maybe at least throw a bone to the skill and the smarts of the science that went into, they were able to stitch together the tiniest little capillaries in your body.
And wow, you really don’t acknowledge at all that’s part of the cure here.
Stephen: But. To even fit that argument. There’s that old joke, there’s a flood and this guy’s stuck on his [00:08:00] roof and a Motorboat comes by and he says no i’m waiting for the lord to save me and then Helicopter comes by he says waiting for the lord to save me, And then a battleship comes by and they’re you know, i’m waiting for the lord to save me he drowns goes to him.
He says lord. I thought you were going to save me. He says well, I sent a rowboat. Helicopter and a battleship. What do you want? It’s that same thing, oh our prayer saved him. Maybe You That God was guiding the doctors. Maybe he guided them to do what he did to learn science and learn about vaccines and all this stuff.
Maybe that’s what God wants from us, but no, the bush didn’t burn. So we can’t believe it.
Alan: I hear you. You know what I mean? That there are. Once you have that mindset that everything happens for a reason, and that God is that reason, then you see everything through that lens, and I can see why that is the first thing you go to when you see a really extraordinary, especially extraordinarily good thing happen.
But then the other side of that is when an extraordinarily bad thing happens, it’s really weird to be like, Wow, the people that just drowned in that hurricane, did God hate all of them? [00:09:00] Or did He just not care about them? They can’t all have been heathens. Whenever they talk about that there was flooding in New Orleans, that’s because that’s a bad city.
We just had, this religious college get flooded near Asheville.
Stephen: It always astounds me is whatever, no matter the situation, whatever happened, you have one group of religious people go it was God’s will. And then you have another group of religious people saying at Satan at work.
Hold on. It can’t be both of them. And it switches depending on the day. Oh my God, I have so many things with that, maybe God and the, and Lucifer are working together and, hey, I’ll let you have that one. You give me this one or whatever. And Lucifer was kicked out of heaven because he had, He questioned God.
Oh, you can’t question my authority. Maybe hell just has bad PR. Maybe it’s really an improved version of heaven because that’s what Lucifer wanted. But hey, he went against God. Oh, I almost got kicked out of Sunday school for these questions. Honestly.
Alan: What’s funny is nowadays that’s become so much a [00:10:00] battleground that instead of being able to have a discussion and say so Why do you believe that way or how is that evidenced itself in your life?
And I want people to have a good life I want people if the way they attribute good things to God and they get self love fulfillment out of it, and the belief that they’re going to heaven is an incredibly wonderful thing, if you believe that way. But I don’t want it to be that now it’s only a loyalty test, that it’s only what are they going to do about me, pretty much an atheist, but also being a pretty good guy?
Where do I get my morals from? You can’t. Obviously I do and, you know what I mean? If I was, if you were to look at me, you’d say, that guy’s really a good Christian. Because I do all the golden rule things, and I do all the, most of the commandments, probably all of the commandments, now that I think of it, except for the things that are specific to bending the knee to God.
I really have a problem with abasement. You know what I mean? For, to, to nothing. To a thing that I don’t believe in at all.
Stephen: God, that’s a label that has. It’s a lot attached [00:11:00] to it. It’s a capital G. It’s a lot attached to it. But the more I think about and learn about quantum physics, quantum mechanics, maybe we’re just putting that word God and it’s a being and that makes it huge.
But maybe there is something else and we’ll discover it through science that is doing all this and controlling it. Maybe God is really the programmer that made our simulation, but it’s that, yeah. That label that and we’re in an age where we’re changing labels because it offends people.
And I’ve said that. I’m like, okay, stop saying Jesus and God ’cause that offends me. Oh, that’s ridiculous, . You can’t choose some and not others and say, this is what I want. Screw anything you don’t agree with, but that’s how things are.
Alan: those things. All my life I’ve heard I’m not. I’m a religious person, but I don’t know that I’m an organized religious person because so much bad comes from that.
And that’s what I see often is there are so many fake Christians, there are so many people that use religion as a bludgeon, not as a, we should, wow, how about help the [00:12:00] poor? How about feed the hungry? How about all the things that really are documented in the Bible as compared to other things that we seem to embrace that aren’t anywhere mentioned?
And yet it’s become the watchword for family values or whatever they come up with these wonderful. Yeah. Memes, a long time. Those phrases that are loaded with all the import that they can give them, even though they don’t match exactly what they’re talking about. The picking and choosing of what matters in the Bible.
And every time we laugh about this, there, there’s a great was it West Wing, I think? Where, the guy kind of says, Hey, I’m the religious candidate, and so you really should follow the Bible. It’s so which part of the Bible are you talking about? The part where I sold my daughter into slavery, or that I killed a child, or that I And there’s so many things.
Not only the good, it’s the, Wow, I couldn’t help but notice that you have a tattoo, and even if your tattoo says love, it says tattoos are an abomination unto the Lord, and that you’re going to go to hell for that. It’s weird how people really are picky and choosy And a lot, this is that whole hypocrisy thing, that [00:13:00] it matters a lot to me to be consistent.
That if you really were to look at how I think and what I believe, you’d be able to see that there are principles that I live by, and I apply them in as many ways as I possibly can, not just eh, today I felt like this, tomorrow I might feel otherwise. That doesn’t sound right. stable. It doesn’t sound committed.
You know what I mean? It doesn’t sound like you really believe and act in a way that other people would know how you think and feel if you’re just blowing with the wind. And yet that doesn’t seem to bother other people that much.
Stephen: But they don’t understand that’s exactly what they do.
And faith and belief is not the same as religion. Those are separate and people don’t get that. And my ex wife was cheating on me. Proven through, emails and phone calls and lied about me to try and get me thrown in jail Yet she was saved in the mormon religion And so they believed her and supported her like she said I can’t afford rent, I can’t [00:14:00] afford food and I can’t afford to go back to court, but I have to fight him because he’s bad.
They gave her money for all of that for four years to keep fighting me to, to go back to court over and over. That’s religion.
Alan: Yeah. That honestly, that get out of jail free card that we’ve seen where, people from Watergate suddenly found religious religion in prison. And then we gave him a free pass, but it’s you like totally undermined the country, you betrayed your most solemn oath as to what you were going to do to defend the United States against enemies, both foreign and domestic, all of those kinds of things.
Oliver North getting a free pass, all the other things that we’ve seen for, you can’t just claim you’re a religious guy and then whatever you do is in line with God, because that’s like son of Sam territory. We’re used to evangelism. You’ve got choices in your head telling you what to do.
That’s not God, that’s your craziness and you’re going to grab God as a, I don’t know, a line out of the quicksand that you put yourself into,
Stephen: we’re used to evangelists. Saying that, doing that. Send me [00:15:00] all your money so I can buy this new house that God said I should have. Exactly.
Alan: I, we’re in that, we’re still in it ever since the moral majority and here it is 40 years later. It’s such a, an amazing force in our world. And yet, what can you do except still speak out and still say, You’re not just a bad Christian, you’re like no Christian at all. You’re a fucking liar. You’re one of the Philistines that Jesus would have driven you from the temple, Jesus would have whipped you.
You know what I mean? It’s that get out of jail free card, that thing of embracing the term Christian and having it be that no matter what awful thoughts I have, somehow they’re from God. They’re obviously not. And I wish that the people that I know are good Christians that really do live a life that It sure looks like they’re trying to support God, be more like Jesus, feed the, feed the starving, clothe the poor, all that kind of stuff.
I wish that they would speak up and say, [00:16:00] please don’t listen to those bad guys, because they are taking this wonderful thing, and it really is wonderful when it works, when it makes people’s lives better, and they’re distorting it, twisting it, corrupting it, so that, I don’t know, people like me, when I hear someone that’s a lot religious, I think nowadays, the default is they’re bad, they’re not good, that they’re using that as a way of electing bad people, or passing bad laws, or whatever else it might be that The most important issue in the world might be stopping global warming, not stopping naughty language in schools, not stopping mentions of
Stephen: books that you feel kids shouldn’t read, even if I feel it’s okay for my kids to read it or for me to choose to read it,
Alan: the adamance, the certainty that they have.
It’s a flaw in their personality. It is not like, God give me strength. No, he’s trying to tell you maybe you should step back and not be so certain because certainty is not for you. It’s for [00:17:00] a divine being, omniscient and omnipotent. Oh so there’s a nice happy Thanksgiving. Almost Thanksgiving.
It’s interesting to have There’s so much also nowadays about the people that want to control the story and rewrite history and so forth. And unfortunately, Thanksgiving is one of those things we’ve made it into a little school pageants that say, Hey, the Indians and us got together and really the Indians saved us.
We didn’t know how to plant crops in the new world. We didn’t know how to hunt. We were. Our colony would have died out if not for the hospitality, the generosity and benediction of the Native Americans taking care of us. Let’s
Stephen: go wipe them
Alan: out, all of them. And yes, that was the thanks we gave them.
Thank you. I don’t want to spoil Thanksgiving. I don’t want it to be that it’s only an excuse for a history lesson, but to also blind people to the fact that it really was Thanksgiving. Miraculous, nearly miraculous act of generosity on the part of people that could have said these guys are invaders.
All we have to do is just let them die. They don’t know what they’re doing. [00:18:00] And instead, Oh, no, godless heathens. They have cultural traditions of offering hospitality. You don’t turn people away. It’s only if they’ve discovered that you’ve done a bad thing, then there’s punishment that goes with that.
But otherwise, if you’ve survived the rigors of crossing an ocean or crossing a plane to get to our encampment, of course we will feed you and give you a place to sleep. It’s how humanity survives against a nature that was much more hostile back then.
Stephen: The people that were here. embraced what we consider good Christians nowadays, much more so than the people that came for religious freedom.
Alan: Let me see a problem here. There’s a lot to be said about, United States was like a self chosen penal colony. Australia was made up of all the people they sent there. Whereas the United States were, a lot of the groups were people that they sent there. Couldn’t abide by whatever the standards were in, in England and Spain and Portugal and France or where else, wherever else we had colonization from because they were [00:19:00] on the outs.
They weren’t accepting of the king is a divine leader or that the Puritan puritanical, and that’s not the right term because we had that, the pure, but the, whatever they did to escape, it’s ’cause they were. Like the outcasts, they weren’t the best and brightest coming over from Europe.
They were the ones that couldn’t seem to find a home because they were already fanatic. So it is no wonder that we might have had some fanatic string continue, if that’s at all a genetically inherited trait, or a culturally inherited trait. Once you have the idea that we’re crossing not because we can’t live anywhere here in Europe, but because we’re the chosen people, because we want religious freedom.
It’s interesting to I really shout out to Heather Cox Richardson. I think I’ve mentioned her before. She’s a great columnist on stack that is very much a historian, and she’s really good at giving the historic perspective of what the United States has been through, how a lot of what we’re seeing, of course, history repeats, or at least rhymes, and that this is not the first time we’re seeing this kind of stuff, that we’ve had arch [00:20:00] religious periods before with Father Coughlin, or that we’ve had, big businessmen.
Deciding that because you’re a good businessman, you’re wise on everything. And so you should run the entire country. What? Because you built railroads, you should be able to make decisions on every fucking topic
Stephen: under it’s not even, you’re a good businessman. You’re a good salesman because you’ve convinced me.
You’re a good businessman, no matter how bad you really are.
Alan: And that and then when you look into their lives, it’s for goodness sake, you sure have a lot of mistresses, you sure have a lot of people that you’re paying slave wages as if they are indentured servants, and the more that comes out like that, it’s I don’t know why we haven’t learned that lesson of, make sure that, if you’re a, if they are successful, they’re successful at what they are successful at, but not that having a lot of money means that somehow they gained it through wisdom, they gained it through Compassion and serving humanity.
There’s all kinds of people that got very rich by doing nothing to serve humanity. They did it by parasitizing off. You know what I mean?
Stephen: How much more money do you think they threw at Melania so she wouldn’t [00:21:00] divorce Trump until after his presidency? How much?
Alan: Or it could be that’s the orders from her Russian handlers that say, Hey, as long as you have sway over him and we need a woman on the inside, you can’t be better than sharing the bed with the president.
I don’t
Stephen: think they share a bed. You’re
Alan: exactly right. They don’t, from what I understand. She’s
Stephen: moving to a different state to be closer to her son. And not. In New York, what am I saying, Washington and not in Mar a Lago, but so she doesn’t want to be first lady. Essentially, she’s trying to distance herself, but I think they’re telling her you can’t.
You can go so far and nothing else that I’m that’s got to be a compromise. I you can’t tell me that She just said i’m going here, i’m first lady, but i’m going here. I know somebody went You know And i’m sure there was some backdoor compromise going on
Alan: there. So it’s worth, I mentioned this a little bit Hey audience, we often have a little crap.
Texting messaging back and forth as to what are we going to talk about? This isn’t just random. We actually do have [00:22:00] some things of what’s big this week And one of the things I thought was, there’s, and I just mentioned it you should be able to tell the principles that someone’s operating out of by how they apply their time, their attention, their will.
And what do you think are the principles that Trump is operating out of to be based on his current cabinet picks? They seem insane. They seem the worst people almost to a man and a woman. That he could pick for these various different positions. It sure seems like demolition and destruction and the undoing of America compared to who do you put in charge of education, an educator, who do you put in charge of transportation?
Someone that, that there is no field that they should specialize in. And instead you’ve got terrible, the whole rest of the world agrees they’re terrible. And yet, How far is he trying to do with it that it’s just my will because I [00:23:00] he’s he really wants what he can get away with he wants to see how far he can push Congress that each of these things is A test for Congress to say are we going to stand up?
Are we really gonna put the worst criminal in the Attorney General spot? Are we gonna put the worst anti medicine person into this? In charge of
Stephen: health. I don’t think it’s any of that. I don’t think it’s even that deep that thought out I think it’s clearly hey if you give me a lot of money for my campaign support me and speak out I’ll give you a position.
I’m that’s like it seems stupid, but i’m I would lay money down on that
Alan: one. If it’s not money, it’s at least the unending support, really are one of the things that the dark triad people have is they value loyalty because that means that you still haven’t seen through their ruse that you really actively get others to accept all the craziness that you’re doing.
And that is a very strong link that these are the people that no matter what has been going on, they’re the ones that went on, meet the press and said, no, he’s not. [00:24:00] There is that. They really have been loyal, but in a way if you’re loyal to, you name, you’re loyal to Napoleon until he destroys the world, you’re loyal to Hitler, you’re loyal to Satan, you’re loyal to, that loyalty is not the biggest virtue of them all, and some people act as if it is, but if you’re an LNL, a thinking human being, when you see your friend Who’s been fine up until the point, start to substance abuse, or hurt his wife and children, or actively commit crimes.
It might be that you can’t bring yourself to like, call the police on him. But you sure don’t buy into all the evil stuff that they’re doing. You talk to them and say, hey, maybe you should cut back on the methamphetamines and stuff like that. And yet there’s all kinds of, moms that won’t narc on their sons, no matter that their son is on a violent rampage because he’s my boy.
And whatever that thing is that lets you rejoin humanity and say, you, you have to stop bad things from happening to other people. [00:25:00] It’s part of your obligation to the rest of the tribe,
Stephen: but this is all loyalty for power. That’s, that’s as simple as that. Again it’s overthinking from our part that this, my mother does it a lot and I try and get her to, to real.
I’m like, nanny, you’re overthinking this. But it doesn’t make sense. You’re right. It doesn’t. You would think that normal people that care about others that want to be a good person. But that’s not what we’re dealing with. You’re dealing with narcissism. I’ve dealt with that with my ex And they don’t think that way and you can’t convince them Otherwise because as far as they’re concerned, they really are doing it for what’s this is what’s best and blah blah blah So this is all loyalty for power And everybody else is go get screwed, but they well that’s because we know what’s best
Alan: I, one of the things that really always hurts me about these situations is it’s not only the bad that’s being done and what we’re doing to combat it because in the [00:26:00] last administration, he didn’t have any cabinet member except maybe DeVos last the entire administration, he had any number of people that they were found, they were scandalized, they were found out to be bad in various different ways and were ousted or that they left before the worst of the truth could come out or whatever else it might be.
Yeah. And I like that justice is occasionally done, but there’s an incredible opportunity cost. We just had a good administration that moved us forward in so many ways about The economy and the ecology and the education and the energy policy and all the E’s all the E’s and now we’re going to just take four years off from doing any of that or reverse it and move it or even reverse it.
Exactly. So how much more can the planet survive us doing nothing that we’ve known it’s a problem for 25 years about global warming and how much can we. affect our children getting educated and being able to make a sound decision as to who’s the right person to vote for, what’s the good policy to support, all those things.
It, there’s, there, we’re [00:27:00] wasting so much possibility of, if we did. All those small businesses that started up and we’re increasing, increasingly buoying up our economy and making the American dream happen again. We’re just going to snuff that out. We’re just going to go back to.
Stephen: No, we’re not. No, we’re not.
Because now it’s going to be that top 10 richest people. It’s benefiting them. It’s going to help them. So it’s all
Alan: good. And all the money, does it really trickle down? No, now we’ve got 40 years. It hasn’t for 40 years. A lie from the start that there’s no such thing as supply side economics that works.
That it’s never, it’s been a catchphrase, like I’m a Christian, that they get to talk about capitalism while not doing it. So it’s, I just, This is because we didn’t have a thing last week to talk about the election results. It’s all the incredible sadness and outrage over whatever the phrase is about getting people to vote against their self interest.
It’s [00:28:00] that to the nth now. We’ve seen what he did and we had a sterling example of, if you do better, how it benefits everyone. And instead we decided on lies and oh no, the Haitians are here. It was like, you can see the lies that were meant to be all the crazy wedge issues.
Transgender bathrooms. Again, really people, I think that’s so icky that they’re willing to tank the country, tank the world, because the United States has such influence on it. I, my biggest right now Colleen and I are in, 1500 days mode. Let’s keep ourselves safe. Let’s isolate ourselves.
We really, of course, the country won’t go to hell. We’re never going to be Nazi Germany. We’re never going to be that. We go to war against other countries. We’re not going to kill all the Jews. It’s not going to get that crazy. But the status that we have in the world. About being the place that has all the scientific breakthroughs that makes us [00:29:00] all live longer.
I don’t know. What’s my personal stake? I love my Manjaro and it’s helped me lose weight. I really need to do that in order to survive longer when my Manjaro goes up tenfold in price because we no longer have negotiations for prices we no longer make sure that there’s I The list of all the ways in which things are going to get worse You is not going to be worth, oh no, my gas price was too high.
Oh no, I paid too much for eggs. And all the manipulation that went into that. happening. It just breaks my heart that people are that dense, that they really are vote on nothing. They I have I don’t think that it’s half the country because there’s incredible apathy as well, which is its own problem.
You know what I mean? The way he got in was not with 50 percent of the vote. There’s no mandate, no matter how many times he declares it, all the things that are coming out now that all the votes are being counted. It really is that we’re in trouble because we let the reds take over once again, too many places and come to midterm elections, we’ll see how much that gets reversed again.
But [00:30:00] for now, we’re just going to, we’re going to take two years and gut good things, and then what are we going to do to recover? And try to get back on track to being a really civilized country. The world must be sick over what has happened.
Stephen: You are definitely more hopeful than me. I’m much more cynical.
I don’t have as much faith in people too often. It’s always proven wrong for the most part. Yeah, there’s some great people. I know some great people. I know, but unfortunately it’s the minority, way smaller minority. Most people in the majority are way too they’re so Oh my god, I’ve got to get home to watch the new NCIS.
I can’t be bothered with these other problems. That’s too much to think about. They told me something easy. I like that. I, it’s like you said, apathy is a large part of it and outright narcissist and self interest and stupidity with self interest. I think that’s the best thing, but I’m not smart enough to figure it out, but I’m going to say [00:31:00] I’m smart enough because I’m not smart enough to know I’m not smart enough.
I don’t know.
Alan: We’re going to die of the Dunning Kruger effect. Yeah, exactly. Going on record, because it’s just so true. What is Colleen Knight’s biggest shield? The fact that we’re, like, old and white. That we’re not any threat to anybody. We’re not the dreaded immigrant, the dreaded gay person, the dreaded Jew, that whatever it is that people have again, maligned, the dreaded cat ladies.
Honestly the sickening prejudice that you see in this country, we can still go to all of our national parks and people will not suspect us of being bad. They’ll be like, Oh, look, the nice old people are going out for a walk. And as long as I don’t. Open my mouth and say, how if we stop that fracking right outside your national park?
How long is this going to survive? I just need to bear with it and do what I can in all the, I don’t know, not getting us dragged into jail ways. I don’t think we’re going to see disappearances. We’re not going to see deportation. We just can’t. [00:32:00] The country is not going to allow for that. And yet, I don’t want it to be that all the other ways that things have gone wrong.
There’s pandemics coming, and I’m willing to get the vaccines all the time, but I hate thinking of I can’t go on my concerts, my comedy clubs, my cruises my church, my, my movie theater, knowing that there are people that are actively not taking care of themselves, and they’re sending their kids to school without vaccination.
And they’re, it’s, we’ve made the world a terribly dangerous place for no good reason. No good reason except ignorant and stubbornness
Stephen: And to make rich people richer. I mean that’s the reason
Alan: there is some of that, but I hope there’s only so many places that you can like, Hey everything is dying on the coast.
Don’t worry. I got a nice castle in the Midland that is going to be safe. And yet maybe they’ll get a snow storm in an avalanche. Maybe they’ll get a flood from a river instead, whatever it is that they [00:33:00] can’t be perfectly safe. Maybe it is that. After you’ve done something that really hurts people, you can’t go out to eat at a nice restaurant anymore, because there will be people that will come to your table, like they went to McConnell’s, and give them a piece of their mind.
And it shouldn’t be that they can do this deviltry, and then go on living as if the world is a nice place built just for them.
Stephen: But again, they don’t view it as devilry. That’s, that’s part of this issue, is they really Will look you in the face and say no i’m doing this cuz it’s the best thing and it will save the world i again i bring up my ex cuz that’s my most intimate dealing with this i said many times with her she could you could watch her do something.
And then bring it back up and she will swear up and down. You’re lying. And she didn’t do it. And not because she’s lying. She would completely believe it. Her brain rewrites what happened. It rewrites history and she makes choices that are good for her and hurts other people. [00:34:00] But we’ll flat out be able to tell you, no, this is what’s best.
This is the best thing in the world. I’m doing it for, because I care so much, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. As it’s hurting me, the kids, other family members, et cetera. She told it, she would pass a lie detector test. And I guarantee you, that’s what most of these cronies will would do.
Alan: I, it’s funny.
I, we hardly ever talk about this because our life has moved on, but I really understand that. And then I would overhear her talking to her mom, recounting what we had talked about, and it was so far divorced from reality that I was like, wow, I’m pretty sure we were both there. I’m pretty sure that I could, because I am this odd, almost eidetic memory type guy, recite the conversation.
And none of what you’re saying, and a lot of what we did say, it’s all being left out there. Two. for ego preservation to, mom, I’m still a good [00:35:00] girl, even though she really had done some terrible things.
Stephen: But again, it’s not even that it’s narcissistic mental illness. It is a, it’s a disease.
It’s an illness. I, yes, they’re doing it for malicious and self serving purposes, but it’s some rewiring, some chemical imbalance. That’s doing it. Unfortunately, I don’t want to dismiss it. And yes, everything there’s doing, you want to just beat them with a two by four because of it. But it’s, I’ve had to come to accept that because it just, you
Alan: know, And again, I very much share that, I took the biggest promise of my life straight out of Kramer versus Kramer.
And I had to betray it. Because it was a matter of survival, and I saw increasingly in what danger I was for how she could say those things, really believing them, and convince you name it, the family, the policeman, the judge, that things had happened that didn’t happen or whatever else it might be, [00:36:00] I saw that she did not care about my things, and I didn’t want my, what, I’m going to come one day and my whole community is going to be burnt down?
It was. Signs of this really is not only a bad situation, but it’s not going to get better, and that big realization of it really has gone so far to get to that point of confidence that no matter how much you think you can love, and explain and get to we can fix this when you really have like that moment of clarity of like I’ve gone as far as I can.
I cannot make any headway against this. That’s when I knew that it was time for us to part. And happily, luckily, we did. We parted well, instead of it being then thermonuclear war and stuff like that. Her best behavior was that last six months of, let’s just part. Let’s not claw at each other on the way out.
Let’s just get on, start our [00:37:00] lives again after this. And I thank her very much for that, because it could have been terrible. And instead, that it really, And it’s sadly, but and it only cost me five years and I’m glad that it wasn’t. We had kids and then I have to see them forever because of that link.
I was very lucky in that regard, though. Part of why that happened was because. I saw early on some things that made me think he would not be a good mom. What a terrible thing to say about someone who might not be a good parent. You know what I mean? But just that it, when you’re really worried about that, and that thing that you’d be the most concerned with and invested in for the rest of your life, and you think you’re bringing someone into that situation of danger, I couldn’t do it.
I just couldn’t that end . So
Stephen: I I came this close to getting thrown in jail for lies. But luckily she isn’t as smart as she claims she is. She told people yeah, that [00:38:00] she was tested above Einstein’s iq. And that I was, I felt threatened by that because she was just so much smarter than me. And yet her lies, I was able to come up with so many arguments and poke holes in it that the judge didn’t even listen to it.
After that she got mad and kept trying to argue. And he’s no, there’s nothing you can say that’s going to make me believe you at this point. So that was,
Alan: Yeah. Some
Stephen: part
Alan: of what helped me so much was that if you really don’t have it together, It isn’t just there’s a whole bunch of private devil, public angel that was going on, but there were some situations where the mask slipped and my friends or my family Saw how terrible she could be, and then my stories were more believable because they had seen it for themselves.
Going in and no matter how much I’m complaining, but I am a big guy, and so in any situation, you would think that. That I would be [00:39:00] the threatener, the one that throws my weight around, and they, when I talked about she’s thrown things at me and she struck me, and they’re like, come on, she wouldn’t do that.
What can I do but tell the truth? Then when they saw that kind of stuff happen, and it’s not just the doing of it, it’s when you hear that tone of voice that really is that. Really nasty, really disrespectful, really get in your digs however you can because that’s what you’re about. There was a lot then of proof out in the world that it wasn’t only my saying these things and feeling painted into a corner.
She had created the way out by not being able to control herself. You know what I mean? By not being able to contain all that terrible stuff. So
Stephen: I had her family saw it and believed it and knew it, but was too afraid to rock the boat and spend effort fighting against her. So they just let it go. And I was left with no support on that.
So,
Alan: Even more isolated. Exactly. Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah.
Alan: I know this hardly, The turn we wanted to talk about today, but it [00:40:00] really is that it’s funny. There’s been all these things about what do we feel like we’re feeling like abused wives in the United States. People are getting away with fucking evil stuff.
And yet you have to plan your escape. You can’t just fight back when they have many more advantages or when they just, the biggest advantage they have is that they have no boundaries. They’ll do any fucking thing. And when you find out that someone is willing to do that, that, how do I get into a fight to make it stop? I don’t get in a fight to hurt someone, to kill someone. I just calm down. I’ll hold you off of me. I won’t be the aggressor. And there’s people that don’t think that way at all. Yeah, they want to
Stephen: win and they
Alan: will do
Stephen: whatever.
Alan: Yeah, they go wild, you know what I mean?
And maybe they’ll have regrets afterwards, but maybe not either. He made me do it that kind of, Oh my God. Oh my God. All right. So other topics, David Valdachi, as an answer that you really like, what do you say?
Stephen: Okay. So he’s not my favorite author. He’s my mother’s favorite author. She likes [00:41:00] his thrillers.
She likes his stuff. I’m not actually a huge thriller reader. There’s only a few authors. I enjoy reading thrillers from they just don’t I don’t pick them up as much and enjoy them. But she loves Bell Dachi and he came around. He’s got a new book out. He was coming around doing the author tour and he was down at the Canton palace theater through the Stark library.
So I grabbed tickets
Alan: for the theater with fans is a pretty big, Hey, this author’s got it going on. Okay.
Stephen: It was packed, including the balcony. It was packed. Very cool. Yeah. So I got her VIP tickets to go to a special reception early and get pictures with them and meet him, get a signed book. She got to sit right down near the front row, though.
This made no sense. He was on this side of the stage. She had to sit in the front row over here. I’m like, it would’ve been better. Yeah. This
Alan: would I pe Exactly. Yeah.
Stephen: Put her in the second row over here. That’s better than the first row over here, but but she enjoyed [00:42:00] it. He had a great talk. He had some funny stories author funny stories, like he’s coming on an airport middle of the night and there’s a guy sitting there reading his book and he goes hey, is that a good book?
And he goes, yeah, it’s a page turner. I can’t put it down. He goes, oh, I’m glad you enjoy it. Would you like me to sign it? No, why do I want you to sign my book? And he goes because I wrote it. No, you didn’t write it. And he takes the book and holds up the jacket and the guy goes, Oh, the other one that cracked me up was he got a one star review on a book and the lady said, I just, I can’t support this book.
I’m so disappointed in it because I figured it out in the last three pages. Isn’t that the whole point of it? So you read 487 pages enthralled with the story but when I was wrapping it up you suddenly figured it out and that makes the whole book suck. And, I remember Bill saying once, he writes military sci fi.
All his books have big spaceships above [00:43:00] planets shooting at each other with Things blowing up and a lady gave him a one star and said there’s not enough romance in this
Alan: What
Stephen: speaks romance about military sci fi?
Alan: Soldiers blowing off steam by going to the intergalactic whorehouse. I guess I mean that’d be something douglas adams would write more right that’s The world of expectations not fulfilled. It’s like why did you even think that in the right? Bodice ripping on the cover of the military
Stephen: robots, so she got to meet him.
As I said, yep, David Bell, dodgy breathed on her. So it’s an early Christmas present. I told her the thing is. The last couple of years presence for her have not got a little wonky at times. They’ve stressed me out. They’ve gone weird. And I said, I am not stressing myself out. She goes to Cracker Barrel to meet up with friends from work.
They do that a couple of times a month. So I was going to get her a whole bunch of gift cards for Cracker Barrel. And I said,
Alan: easy for [00:44:00] free. Yeah. You
Stephen: know, we don’t need more stuff in the house. She’s 75. She doesn’t want more stuff. So I was going to do that. And then I noticed mowing the lawn, the planter.
Wait, hold on
Sure, she’s not out listening to me But I noticed the planner she has out front with flowers and my father’s memory rock. It’s falling apart It’s wood. And so I got her I said, okay, I got her a big planner to put out there and then this came up and I got her this and i’m like, okay I just got triple the amount of stuff for nanny for christmas that I intended
Alan: Sometimes it’s feast or family like that.
There’s been some years I regularly get Colleen, some books, and some music, and some clothing, and some jewelry, and whatever else I think are the things that we, that she really likes, and that we both enjoy. And then once in a while, no matter how hard I look, there’s not a new Laura Ingalls Wilder book out there, not even a biography.
She needs to write a few more. Yeah, from beyond the grave, but we’ll just ask AI to imitate her voice. I just wasn’t finding, and what’s funny sometimes, is that [00:45:00] inspires you to go let’s just see if she might like this instead of getting things that are in, in well formed likes, but sometimes that’s a rut too.
You don’t want to only be in ruts. It I’ve had good success with where, like when they open the package and they’re like, Oh, this is so nice. And you had no idea, actually, if they would like it. You know what I mean? So it’s yes, my guess is good.
Stephen: So I taught my kids, to think about something for people.
Don’t just wait till the last minute, rush out and buy a gift package of cookies. Who cares? So my son, Always tries to get something for me unique. And the one year he got me a little plastic toy gun for an action figure. And that’s what he gave me. And people were like, I think he only paid like 16, 20 bucks for it at work.
But people are like, why’d you just get on that? And he’s Oh, trust me. He’ll love it. What it was the missing gun for the very first Star Wars figure I ever [00:46:00] got. So he replaced the gun for that figure for me.
Alan: That’s cool. I did that once for a friend where they were missing a very particular Tales to Astonish, like where the Hulk and the Silver Surfer are in it or something like that.
And they had looked for it forever. And I found them a copy and they were like, I’ve been looking, and I knew they’d been looking for this forever. So once in a while, you really strike gold like that. Especially. When did you get your first Star Wars figure?
Stephen: Oh, it was like 10 years old.
Yeah, it was December of 1980 for the Empire Strikes Back. It’s Han Solo in his Hawke gear. Yes. So it’s like a 45 year
Alan: itch. You know what I mean? That’s really cool. I, Cully and I talked about everything under the sun and once in a while, there’ll be that little, she’ll mention something and then I’ll be able to fulfill it in a way that was like, she never thought that she would get this particular, I don’t know what, I wish I had a good story.
I have done fun things with, I think we talked about this before, birthdays where, hey, if it’s going to be her 50th birthday, find a whole bunch of things related to 50. You know what [00:47:00] I mean? So it’s atomic number 50 and it’s 50 stars on the flag and that whole thing. When it was our 17th anniversary, I got her a piece of amber with a little prehistoric cicada in it, a locust in it, because it was 17 year locust.
You know what I mean? That kind of thing. And she’s always very tickled when I find that little excuse theme that it actually turns out to be very inspiring for finding cool things, a flower that we hadn’t tried in our bread making before because it got mentioned in a book that it’s an old pioneer flower.
It’s oh, I can go look for that. And it really sometimes turns out just like that, whenever we are ribs and kraut or kraut and pork chops that we like, I almost always make it with apples and onions nowadays because that was one of Almanzo’s favorite meals in the Little House books was that he loved the apples and onions.
And it’s just, it shows you listen. It’s not only the thing, it’s that you really listen to your loved one and then she’s tickled by that. That’s a good thing. Hey, everybody, formula for a good marriage. Have a conversation and listen, [00:48:00] just
Stephen: take a moment and think about things, pay attention throughout the year.
It’s not hard once you get in the habit of always in the back we think differently. I found this out, but I’m like, all you got to do is keep that little program looping and running in the back of your brain. So whenever it triggers, as you see or hear something, it goes ping and you file it away and there you go.
And people look at me like. What the hell are you talking about? I’m like, what? Not everybody has 50 different things running in the back of their mind. No, we don’t. I’m like, oh, I thought everybody did.
Alan: It’s not something she talked about in October. It’s something she talked about in February.
Stephen: Or we were on a vacation in 2000 and she mentioned it and now I found it 25 years later.
Here we go.
Alan: Exactly. We’ve had such success. Colleen has gotten me things, like just, in fact, the family has done that occasionally, like the brothers will find my older brother there was a Mr. Robot, like early 60s, where you actually [00:49:00] built it out of plastics and gears and a little battery pack, and then it would walk along stably.
And my younger brother found one of those on an obscure corner of eBay or something like that. And it fit Armin so perfectly. Bruce had found this thing for Armin where he loves putting things together. He loves that’s not quite right. And then he like, adjusts it so that it’s even a smoother motion.
He’s really brilliant in that way of understanding how mechanical things work and how to fix things in case they’re broken and all that kind of stuff. So that was a really cool it’s not just nostalgia. It’s that you understand your brother and that he will find this. Remedy of can tankers thing.
Fascinating. Not a hassle. You know what I mean? He’s going to get this working perfectly.
Stephen: Gina did that once we were at a family reunion or something or sitting around for whatever family thing. And her brother Mark was sitting there. We’re all just chatting. He goes, Oh, I remember the Steve Austin dolls.
I always wanted one. My neighbor had one $6 million. Yeah, you remember those? Blah, blah. And then she later went to Colin and said, Hey, if [00:50:00] you get one of those at the store, let me know. And he goes, oh, we got one now. So she got it for her brother, and we went to some her fa, her father’s birthday, and she said, mark, I got some point.
He goes, it’s not my birthday. She’s I know, but I gotta give this to you. And he opened it and he cried. He’s oh my God, this is, .
Alan: That’s wonderful. And it Alina and I often get each other things where, you know, after you finish it, you’re going to hand it off because they want to read it, too.
And that’s a good thing back and forth, because then you get things that you both will enjoy. But once in a while, when they get you something in particular that if I get her fancy tomatoes, she knows that’s a pure gift. Because no matter how fancy they are, I’m not eating raw tomatoes. And it’s just once in a while, it’s really cool to get a book that’s not at all to her taste. But she knows that. I like it for some reason. Maybe that’s all of comic book. She’s nowhere near the comic book fan that I am. So whenever she gets me something like that, it’s thank you for this really selfless, not our usual, we’ll both read the latest Bill Maher book, the latest David Sedaris book, whatever else.
But that kind of pure gift, and I’m I have been able to find often [00:51:00] things where she’s not even aware that there’s a new Vonnegut like collection of letters that he wrote to his sister or something like that, but it really contains his wit. He was a very witty, wise man besides his books.
And then like she thought, as you said, he’s not writing anymore. There’s no more Vonnegut coming out and yet one appears. And so a couple of times I’ve had really good luck with finding that kind of thing. And,
Stephen: Sometimes you get some weird things like Colin really liked Shakespeare and they have the three main Star Wars movies written like Shakespeare would have written them in books and I have not gotten it yet because I haven’t needed something, but he knows about it.
So it’s not a Oh, my God. I didn’t even know about this. So he knows about he’s not gotten it for himself, but it’s something I’ve kept in my back pocket. But just to Somebody to think that up, like if somebody would write NCIS, like Laurel Ingalls would, there’s some weird thing like that, you
Alan: know, They did have that series of books that was like, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Serpents.
Zombies. [00:52:00] Exactly. And zombies. Exactly. So I think it was like half a dozen of them. Yeah. Because I got the first few and they were very witty, but then I didn’t, Actively keep up with that and I should go see which ones I’ve missed, you know That’s once in a while. Maybe it’s like now when we’re getting into the winter the doldrums I want to stay inside.
I want to read more books and I will go and look at I think I mentioned again Shout out everybody You should be reading charles straws because he really is a great author and he has great ideas and he has a great vocabulary When you’ve got 300 000 words in you and he uses a word you don’t know That’s pretty freaking cool because it doesn’t happen that often for me So having said that I found out that I had fallen behind on like the Laundry Files books.
And hey, that might be a kind of an innocuous title, but they’re really good. They’re a combination of like spy novels and Cthulhu mythos. You know what I mean? And so I found out that I got four or five of them that I had missed in the course of just not paying attention to it for five years. If you’re a prolific author, you can fall behind quickly.
So [00:53:00] I did that. I got a whole bunch of Simon R. Green’s series of his that I hadn’t read. And I think I’ve been talking about this before, but it has been a joy. Working my way through them was like one from him and one from him and one from him and alternating so it wasn’t just that I binged through them because sometimes authors have a style and Terry Pratchett is the guy that I always speak about this that if you read too many of them in a row His sense of humor is beautiful But it keeps pushing that humor button in your brain that they aren’t as effective because they’re not as surprising or whatever So by Sam series does that to me?
There you go. Exactly. So a little round robin of things that I enjoy, and that gets me too. So there we were. We’re out in Colorado for a wedding, and we are staying in Golden because that’s where it’s going to be. But then we also wanted to go to Boulder because that’s where Tim, Colleen’s son, is buried, and we wanted to make sure that we had a chance to visit with him.
So we’re wandering around Golden, and like I had read my books, I even brought like even the emergency books that I had bought because we got snowed in. I had finished [00:54:00] them. So we’re in a little bookstore there. And you know how it is, you browse the bookshelves and you’re looking for what might strike your fancy.
And I found a book by Christopher Buhlmann called The Black Tongue Thief. And one of those, you read the front and read the back, lots of people who I respect that like his work, the description of the thing is this could be cool. And then it was better than I expected. So isn’t that one of the most wonderful things where you buy music, like the first Marillion album where I had no idea what to make of it except, hey, three songs per side, so they’re longer and they got a whole, the keyboards are in the band and all kinds of, I didn’t know anything about it except it turned out to be a great find.
This book is like that. Yeah. So everybody, if you’re looking for the next great sword and sorcery, magic, high fantasy, great world building great culture, clash of cultures, real like magic, a magic system that’s really well developed, but really mysterious and how it’s described is both thrilling and chilling.
You got to get this Christopher Buhleman book called The Black Tongue Thief. [00:55:00] Highest recommendation. I love when you find once in a while something that’s and once in a while it’s, How does he have five books out? I’ve not read any of them. How did I totally not have him on my radar? This guy, I think he just came out with a sequel called The Daughter’s War that is a prequel actually.
And so I’m going to be picking that up now based on having so much enjoyed this. It’s thank you for existing. You get to take the place of George r. Martin, who just won’t finish that series. Patrick Rothfuss. Oh I Besides the Baldacchi for the Mom, anything you’ve read lately that you would recommend?
Stephen: Lately I’ve actually been going back and re reading some comics, series, and, comfort, casual. But there’s a movie out that I’m excited to go see the red one the Christmas movie. Movie
Alan: preview for it recently. Exactly. Okay.
Stephen: I’m excited because it looks fun. It’s got the rock.
It’s got JJ Simmons in it so i’m like, oh good. Maybe this will be a good fun movie. Colin goes. It’s got yetis. Let’s go see the yetis
Alan: Exactly. [00:56:00] Oh to you and mention this to colin. I think i’m last month. I put in my first comic book order in right 20 years. And so now I’m only two weeks away from them showing up on my doorstep.
Stephen: So
Alan: The I’m so excited about and Colin had mentioned this, the absolutes and the ultimates, ultimate is the marvel and absolute is the DC where they’re like restarting the series and not in a way that just brought all what has come before, but they’re trying to like, do the retellings that they totally
Stephen: separate from everything else.
Alan: Exactly. And a whole different universe. And they sure look from the blurbs and the covers really good. All kinds of authors and artists that I don’t know enough about. So I’m like, okay, my, I did anything that Neil Gaiman is doing, anything that David Finch. I have certain people that because they were doing something and sometimes not for the big two, I went ahead and bought things even from other publishers.
But I so much concentrated on Marvel and DC because just by buying all of what they’re putting out hundreds of dollars. And I have to really think of. Am I gonna start this [00:57:00] up again? I miss it terribly. Even getting graphic novels from the library is not the same as month by month. The big shared world things, the crossovers, the, and especially the monthly dose that lets you think about it and anticipate what’s coming up next, right?
It’s a wonderful way to live a life, to have that injection, every week of all these good comic book stuff. And so I’m looking forward to seeing. Maybe in a very interesting way. I took 20 years off. What happened? You know what I mean? A lot. I’ve done that before where they jump forward in history.
It’s Oh they had kids and I don’t know these kids. And I’m really looking forward to it.
Stephen: Once you get it and start reading some of them, I mentioned to Colin’s Hey, maybe sometime you could get on a call. So maybe we can find a different day of the week he’s off or an evening and get him on and talk about comics and stuff.
He found out he has like a small fan club. that people follow his posts and his his videos and stuff for recommendations and things like that. So he was like a little [00:58:00] humble brag, but it’s like a little astonished also. It’s I have a fan club.
Alan: I actually, it’s funny. I really was thinking making that a part of this, or maybe even, Oh my God, starting a blog or some other thing where Because I’m doing this, I’m restarting after 20 years, I think it’s going to be a very cool thing to be able to say, I have a lot of comic book history in me, and how does that compare to what’s now being created?
Does it work? Does it tie together? Or are there things they decided to throw that out because he was never a really good character anyway. And I just, I want to share those experiences in a way that maybe people would say, This guy knows what he’s talking about. Maybe I should read what he recommends in the way that Colin has found a fan club.
That’s very cool.
Stephen: That’s
Alan: all
Stephen: for him. That’s great. We’ll have to get him on and talk comics. So I got to get rolling because I got three minutes.
Alan: Exactly. I’m glad we reconnected. Happy Thanksgiving. I guess we’ll be doing this again next Tuesday. So before we thank you, we can discuss gravy. We can discuss giblets.
All right, man. Have a great week. Take care of Steve. Okay.
[00:59:00] You have been listening to the Relentless Geekery Podcast. Come back next week and join Alan and Stephen’s conversation on Geek Topics of the Week.
