– By William Cooper
I recently stumbled upon more proof that throughout history, humans have always had great goals and clever ideas, but often lack proper follow through.
Numbers from one to ten are uniquely named, mainly because of how special our ancient digits were to us as our first wearable technology. And then you reach eleven and twelve. What’s up with that? There’s a hot and searing debate in the etymological community about those numbers. I won’t say how hot and searing, but suffice it to say, it’s not a topic of conversation you should raise during your next etymology dinner party. Words like “discredited” are bandied about in haughty English accents by eyebrow-raising academics in smoking jackets.
At any rate, allow me to summarize a conglomeration of leading theories. When primitive human counted to ten and noticed there was still counting to be done, there arose a real Y(-2)K situation. “I’ve counted ten,” says primitive human, “but I haven’t counted all of what I have!”. So some early nerd came up with a system hack. Eleven is “one left” after ten. Twelve is “two left” after ten. Fantastic. Seems like you might have a system that would last you quite a while, primitive human.
But then things get lazy. The theory goes that primitive human barely counted over twelve. But why? Lack of follow through. Anything over twelve was considered “many” with a wave of the “I can’t be bothered with this anymore because I have some mammoth thighs to chew on” primitive hand. Much later, somebody applied a patch to the system that was called “teens,” a barely-thought-out, slacker kludge that is also characteristic of most teens I know today.
Sharp readers might notice that this is the same approach taken with months. You get all the way to August and things are rosy, creativity just oozing out of every Greek and Roman pore. But then, it’s time for arguing with Plato or sticking a feather down your throat, and we end up with the “ember” months. “Yawn, where did we stop?… Sigh. I don’t care, just fill out the rest however you want, how about Number and then… dunno… Ember?” Just lazy if you ask me.
Our episode this week is about dreams. What? Yes, the previous story has nothing to do with dreams – I just wanted to keep you engaged for a while to illustrate a point. Follow me here. The average person has three to five dreams a night. Let’s say that half of the world slept as you took the time to appreciate this post, more of course if you yourself fell asleep during it and just woke up. That’s around 3.7 billion people. But hey, maybe some of them couldn’t sleep, or maybe they work the night shift, or maybe they woke up to get a drink of water. Cut that conservatively in half again, round it up a bit, and you get 2 billion people. How many of them were dreaming during this? Let’s say a fourth.
So while you read my post, five hundred million dreams were being dreamt, five hundred million dreamscapes were being created and played out across the mind, five hundred million unique experiences were scripted by the unconscious or the subconscious or by whatever dreaming force is responsible for scheduling such performances. It’s an endless system of creation that has continued from the first time primitive human dozed off during counting.
In this episode, we dream a little dream called podcast. Still feeling the sting of our Twitter-bot smack down, we lament the bizarre narrowcasting that we’ve come to as a society in the Age of Correction, and then immediately yearn for the Twitter-bot-bump. It’s a complicated relationship. The Mound of Doom takes revenge on Scott with an itching, burning plaque of “poison something” while William expresses sympathy with a story of his own backwoods betrayal. We greet a new listener baby, who arrives in this world with an entourage of community-sponsored dinners, which is enough to set William’s stomach scheming. William then takes on the mantle of Mr. Raw Deal, first losing a battle of common sense with his wife, and then at the Edge of Disaster, gaining moral superiority with Apple as level-1 support turns out to be as level-1 as you might expect. Dreams are next as William rearranges his into neatly-aligned packages, while being chased by jaguars. Brain-fed by podcasts (the natural sleep aid), Scott executes a unique body subroutine that is responsible for saving many a dream child. William shares his experiments in lucid dreaming, which are actually twisted sleep studies in repeated lucid wakings. Is NyQuil actually peyote? Do cats dream of coyotes? Why is William screaming? Why is Scott falling down? This whole sleep thing is dangerous. We take welcome refuge in the familiar musical arms of Stereophonic Sound with Sugar, Spice and Rudolph Friml and the world’s first stereo-scored orchestra, complete with a Westrex cutter head system with a scully lathe! We demonstrate our expert foreign language skills, debate cheesecake and beefcake, and through the waterfall of entwining lines of sound, visit both Julie Newmar and Nigel Tufnel. Luxury!
Links:
Far Cry Primal
Silent LucidityDiscogs: 101 Strings Play The Sugar And Spice Of Rudolph Friml – 1959
eBay: LP – Rare Julie Newmar Cheesecake Cover
Julie Newmar
Rudolf Friml
Nigel Tufnel
