0:00:00 Tom Barbalet: Hello, Heron.
0:00:01 Heron Stone: Hello, Tom.
0:00:03 TB: I have a bunch of topics kind of scribbled down on pieces of paper to keep it old-school. I'd like to talk a little bit about your movement away from sex-cam-ing, or whatever the term is, to Google Hangouts. And I didn't see your most recent one because I wasn't sure how much content... What you seem to be doing is putting out content for like two hours, but only part of it is actually content.
0:00:30 HS: I'm not actually putting anything up, it's being put up, and I haven't figured out how to take it down yet. [chuckle] So I'm not in any big hurry. This is just experimental.
0:00:41 TB: But within that, sometimes you can have... I think the longest one you've had an actual discussion through was about an hour or so within the two-hour format. But you are averaging typically at least one reasonable discussion per Hangout.
0:00:57 HS: Yeah, something like that. Yeah, well, I've got a lotta work to do here. This is gonna require me to build this, rather than... There's some traffic there, and I think I can get some, but I'm gonna have to push this.
0:01:09 TB: Yeah. And I was certainly... I put up a video in the past week, in fact, it must have been a week ago, just saying to folks where my YouTube channel, there's gonna be more content coming through this YouTube channel. And the response I got from that was relatively negative and quite curious, like basically...
0:01:28 HS: Wait a minute. For what?
0:01:30 TB: I put up a video, which is about two minutes long, just saying I'm going to start using this YouTube channel for my Kickstarter, and possibly for the Gorilla of Code. So if you see a lot of stuff associated with that...
0:01:44 HS: No...
0:01:45 TB: Then that's what's coming through the channel. And it's probably the first time in, I don't know. I've appeared in photographs and stuff, but the commentary associated with my appearance was quite derogatory. And I thought to myself...
[laughter]
0:02:00 HS: What do you mean? They're making fun of what you look like.
0:02:01 TB: Yeah.
0:02:02 HS: Really?
0:02:02 TB: Yeah. Apparently...
0:02:03 HS: Geez, how rude. [chuckle]
0:02:05 TB: Apparently, I haven't posted any photos of me in the past 10 years or something. It doesn't really make much sense to me because I guess I look in the mirror, and I see degradation. But I don't feel like a thing did pass.
0:02:20 HS: You ain't seen nothing yet, Tom. [chuckle]
0:02:22 TB: Believe me, by the time I'm your age, Heron, I will just be like a prune-like creature, I think. Now I was quite curious, and I just thought, "Well, okay, that's feedback, I guess."
0:02:33 HS: Yeah, feedback. Yeah.
0:02:34 TB: So yeah, you probably won't see me in physical form... [chuckle]
0:02:38 HS: Well, I'm probably not gonna even use video there. I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, but I have no... Yeah, I really don't like video. I just think it's a distraction. So we'll see. I'll probably end up not using video there. I'm just... I'm gonna use it probably just...
0:02:55 TB: Well I think it's interesting because one of the conversations you had was with T Rose, and T Rose, by her very nature... She did mention her name was Terri somewhere through the conversation, but she doesn't want any image of her appearing online. And also T, if you're listening in, your Facebook agent, your image on Facebook was used to send a bunch of spam both to the Stone Ape Facebook page, and it sounds like Heron as well. So you've been removed from the Stone Ape Facebook page, but we can bring you back if we know it's really you somehow. [laughter] But yeah...
0:03:25 HS: I don't think it was spam, I think she sent some stuff out...
0:03:31 TB: No, this was definitely spam...
0:03:32 HS: Oh really? Okay.
0:03:33 TB: Because Facebook identified it immediately as... I think what had happened was someone had hacked into a variety of accounts, were all posting the same links, and she just followed that.
0:03:42 HS: Yeah. That was what I thought it was, but I only found two things from her, and both of them were not totally crazy. I could see... Anyway...
0:03:51 TB: Anyway, now that was some interesting conversation. I like the fact you also talked to David Rees as well because I've got a lot of time for David Rees. David, if you're listening to this recording, we probably should explain why we don't talk about... Well Heron occasionally raises... Very, very occasionally raises Richard Dawkins. And from my perspective, Richard Dawkins is about 10 years ago in terms of my interactions with him, and interactive problems with him. And we really... I am at least post-Dawkins, Heron may or may not be. So we...
0:04:23 HS: I don't really give a shit about Dawkins one way or another. [chuckle]
0:04:27 TB: Exactly. But I guess my point was, when he first raised with me that he liked reading Dawkins, that he graduated far enough to probably consume Stone Ape quite comfortable. So I will stick by that assessment.
0:04:40 HS: What is that assessment?
0:04:41 TB: You spoke to a friend of mine called David Rees.
0:04:43 HS: Yeah, Dave, yeah. Yeah, right.
0:04:45 TB: He said he's listened to Stone Apes. In fact, that's how he found out about your Hangout. And he said that I introduced Stone Ape to him by saying, "Well if you like reading Dawkins, you'll like Stone Ape." And he said, "Well we don't talk... " He said you and I, Heron, don't talk about Dawkins.
0:05:03 HS: No. [chuckle]
0:05:04 TB: So it was like...
0:05:05 HS: No, but we do... Yeah, obviously, we're in the same sandbox in many ways. [chuckle]
0:05:11 TB: Yeah. Well we... Anyway, there are so many metaphors within a sandbox, I will move away swiftly.
0:05:16 HS: Yeah, that is often, if you have cats around.
0:05:18 TB: Yes, that's exactly the point. I would say Dawkins is the cat in our sandbox. But moving on from that, so yes, I think... David Rees, thank you for being here, and thank you for the wonderful chat you had with Heron, actually. I quite enjoyed it. And I've enjoyed actually, in terms of your conversive parts, all of your guests on your Hangout. Do you think you might formalize the actual guest call-in component?
0:05:41 HS: Oh, I have no idea what I'm gonna do right now. There's no traffic there now, so my... Now I know how to use it, so now the next step is starting to drive some traffic there. I would hope that I can spend the entire two hours talking to people I've never talked to before. That's what I'm looking forward to.
0:06:00 TB: That's interesting, actually, because certainly with your Gendo podcast, you started... Well, particularly towards the end, you had quite frequent regulars that would call in and participate.
0:06:10 HS: Yeah, yeah. And I imagine... Well, I'm hoping... Well, we'll just see. I don't really know whether Google Hangouts is gonna work, but I don't see anything better.
0:06:19 TB: Well, Skype is good if you just want to do audio.
0:06:23 HS: Well, you can do video there too.
0:06:25 TB: Yes, you can now. Yeah, very true. So true.
0:06:30 HS: But Skype... Google Hangouts actually does have some sort of index as to what's live right now.
0:06:37 TB: Does it?
0:06:38 HS: Yeah.
0:06:39 TB: I didn't realize that. So it has a public index where...
0:06:41 HS: Well, it's got something. I haven't been able to figure it out yet. But there's something more going on there. And plus, it doesn't require any extra software, you can do the whole thing through your browser.
0:06:52 TB: Certainly.
0:06:53 HS: So it's got a lot to recommend, that I don't know really whether... Hopefully, I'll find something even better, but this looks like it's the best deal...
0:07:04 TB: The audio quality... Yeah, I prefer Skype for the audio quality...
0:07:07 HS: Yeah, yeah.
0:07:08 TB: But I think Google Hangouts is more universal in terms of its current consumption, and I think anything that backs into YouTube...
0:07:17 HS: Yeah, yeah.
0:07:17 TB: Is very useful because that immediately gets you potential audience that you could never get through anything else.
0:07:23 HS: Yeah, yeah. So between the two of them, I think that's probably gonna give me more traffic than I'm gonna get any place else I've seen so far.
0:07:32 TB: Certainly.
0:07:33 HS: We'll see.
0:07:33 TB: I think since our last recording, I also went on our listener Gabriel's podcast, participated for about five minutes. It was quite a strange... And I've talked to Gabriel about this, it's not like I'm saying anything negative to Gabriel about this because I've been talking to Gabriel for now about three years, associated with podcasting... Our general discussions couldn't be considered mainstream podcast, but at least growing an audience with the weirdos that would listen to this kind of stuff. So I appeared, and he had on a fellow who I guess is... Gabriel is hosting a show. It's very similar to Stone Ape in some regard. He has this fellow that comes on and just does his thing, which is like a monologue, an uninterrupted monologue. And it's very, very curious stuff. And having me on, I wanted to interrupt and ask questions, but the guy was really offended in the participation. It was a very strange experience.
0:08:31 HS: He's not interested in having a conversation.
0:08:34 TB: He was... The thing was that I called in, another woman called in, I think someone else called in as well, and we were all introducing ourselves and talking, and this took time away from this guy's monologue. And I pointed out to Gabriel... And he was a soft speaker as well, so he was kind of a mumbling soft speaker, which was a very strange thing.
0:08:53 HS: Yeah, that's an odd combination. Yes.
0:08:55 TB: And anyway... And I said, "You could have liked to post-production on this, so at least you can bring his levels up." And after three years of recommending to Gabriel that he should do post-production, he still isn't doing post-production.
0:09:04 HS: Well, that's his... That's what he does. [chuckle]
0:09:06 TB: That's exactly what I've talked about to others. Because it certainly...
0:09:07 HS: It is what it is. [chuckle]
0:09:10 TB: It is. Certainly within the Model Rail podcasting YouTube space, there would be people that have come out recently and said that there's a group in the community... Not me, thankfully, but there's a group in the community that are not pulling their weight, and producing basically the same stuff that I produced five, six years ago. There's a market for those people. I'm sure there's a market for Gabriel's stuff as well. I just think...
0:09:33 HS: Yeah, I think you just put out whatever you're gonna put out. [chuckle] Somebody will come, maybe three people, maybe three million, but who knows?
0:09:43 TB: Yeah. But no, I think in... Certainly Gabriel's discussions, I always find interesting. And to a community that I find genuinely fascinating, particularly the whole kind of Afro-centric, Afro-political stuff of Black Panthers through to now, it's certainly a conversation that I'd like to have some participation in as well, if not just be some [chuckle] crazy nut that calls in periodically.
0:10:06 HS: Some honky. [chuckle]
0:10:07 TB: Exactly. Well it's interesting actually because I've always wondered... When I lived in LA in 1990, I was welcomed into the black student community like I was one of them 'cause I clearly wasn't a honky. It's interesting now because...
0:10:23 HS: Well you're not an American, for one, so that helps.
0:10:27 TB: I'm not an American honky, so I don't have that programming basically.
0:10:27 HS: That helps a lot.
0:10:29 TB: But certainly within this community, I'm considered a honky I think. I'm pretty sure I'm considered a honky, where...
0:10:33 HS: I'm not even sure anyone's... Is that really a term that's still being used? I think that may be out-of-date by...
0:10:39 TB: Yeah, they have various other...
0:10:41 HS: What is the current derogatory term for...
0:10:43 TB: There are half a dozen terms. "Peckerwood" seems to be used, "cracker".
0:10:48 HS: Oh, those are old.
0:10:50 TB: Yes, yeah.
0:10:50 HS: Yeah. Man, time for him to come up with a new word. [chuckle] We need a new word. "White devil". No, but that's just Farrakhan's.
0:11:00 TB: Yeah. Well there was some Farrakhan sentiment raised to Gabriel's podcast.
0:11:07 HS: Yeah. Well, not unsurprising. [chuckle]
0:11:10 TB: Well, I think... Just think actually because I think Farrakhan has become considerably... He's basically mainstream-ized.
0:11:17 HS: Yeah. Well, I never have really been too much offended by him. I always thought he sort of made sense. [chuckle]
0:11:24 TB: Yeah. Well, I don't think he goes far enough, so yeah, it's kind of a curious thing.
0:11:28 HS: Yeah, yeah. Everyone seems to think he's so radical. [chuckle] I don't think he's radical enough.
0:11:33 TB: Yeah. Without question, without question. So I've got a bunch of different topics going in a variety of different directions. I'm gonna start with this one first. So a few Sundays ago, probably three Sundays ago, and I haven't really brought this to Stone Ape nor Short Funk because I found it really quite disturbing at the time. I woke up on the Sunday morning, and my wife and I walked to a local breakfast spot, and we had a number of conversations that I realized somewhere through the walk, that my memory wasn't with me, like I had basically lost my memory through waking up. And I think I'd overslept. I wasn't really sure what had happened.
0:12:09 HS: I'm not sure what that means. You mean...
0:12:11 TB: It means that my memory exists for me as a means of putting things together. I found that I have a multitasking aspect to my mind. So in almost all interactions, I'm also running some other task, [chuckle] basically. But I woke up, and through the waking up, I got dressed relatively quickly...
0:12:31 HS: Wait, let me ask... Yeah, you said you do this multitasking kind of thing. And my question is, you say "I do this," but is it something that's happening, or is it something that you are doing? And who the hell is this "you" that...
0:12:46 TB: Well, exactly. But I think... It's interesting actually 'cause that was gonna be another one of my topic. I've noticed in recent recordings, just to shut down topics, you've returned to this, what I would call first-year Stonian discussion associated with, "Well, that's just your story," or these kind of things.
0:13:04 HS: Well, yeah. That stuff is becoming central. I'm going back to that stuff more and more with people.
0:13:08 TB: I know. But you would need to appreciate enough through six years of talking with you, my mode of analysis of discussion is slightly more mature, one would hope, than six years ago. And in this case, I don't have primary reference to how it occurs, I'm just using basic language to try to describe it.
0:13:28 HS: But that I think is... I think that becomes a problem when we're trying to talk about stuff as subtle as the kinda stuff we're trying to talk about. I think we have to start getting really fucking picky with language.
0:13:39 TB: Okay. Let's get really explicit associated with the loss of memory. My general interaction, particularly associated with having conversations with my wife, is that we have a history together, and it's a history together that means that almost every topic or every interaction we have, that referenced back with a previous discussion...
0:14:00 HS: Sure, yeah. They're intertwined.
0:14:02 TB: Exactly.
0:14:02 HS: But you guys are really almost... In some senses, yeah, you are overlapping.
0:14:07 TB: Yeah, without question. So what I realized was that what normally was an instantaneous recovery associated with these things. And what was particularly strange was we started talking about my mother and my brothers coming and staying. And I realized that I had no primary memory. Now I know that I've walked to this restaurant with my brother. But what I found was when I started to try and reflect on that, I had no memories.
0:14:31 HS: Well, that's my whole life.
0:14:33 TB: Exactly. But it's not my life at all.
0:14:35 HS: Really? Okay. Well, you're finally growing up. [chuckle]
0:14:37 TB: What I found was... This is very heavily borrowed from the psychedelic community, was I realized I couldn't panic. I realized I just had to play this thing through, and I realized also that I was... In trying to find things, I was almost reaching for false memories, and I was finding really curious memories. Now thankfully, this...
0:14:58 HS: And this happened... When did you first notice this?
0:15:02 TB: This happened... It only happened for half a day, which is what's particularly curious.
0:15:05 HS: Okay, but it was at breakfast or something, right?
0:15:07 TB: Yeah, I woke up slightly late. We went out to breakfast on a Sunday, we walked there, we walked back...
0:15:13 HS: And when did you first notice this?
0:15:14 TB: When we were walking there.
0:15:16 HS: Okay, on your way walking there.
0:15:17 TB: Yeah.
0:15:17 HS: Okay, so everything was perfectly normal before that?
0:15:21 TB: In getting up, brushing my teeth, and getting ready to leave, I wasn't having a conversation with my wife. It was only when I had a conversation with her that I realized, hold it... And it's also part of waking up as well. When you're in a waking-up frame of mind, you may not be fully cognizant of these things, but I was like, "Okay, well I'm woken up now, we're walking, we're talking," and I have no primary references here to go back and do anything. And I think...
0:15:46 HS: Okay, alright. So you're saying you were like a newborn babe somehow?
0:15:51 TB: Somehow. I still had language. I construct sentences.
0:15:52 HS: Yeah. You still... Okay. And you knew your name, or...
0:15:57 TB: Yes... Yeah.
0:15:57 HS: Okay, so it wasn't bad?
0:15:58 TB: No, it was a partial loss of memory, but it was a loss of memory that I obviously referred to.
0:16:02 HS: Well, it didn't involve the language machine, for one thing, or at least not... Well, who knows?
0:16:06 TB: No, it was very strange, actually. It was pictorial memories. That's the way I function anyway. But it was pictorial memories associated with how many times that I've been to this restaurant previously, how many times...
0:16:17 HS: Well how could you even have that idea? "How many times have I... " You mean...
0:16:20 TB: Well, I know for a fact that I had the inkling that I walked there with my brother, and I knew as the thing proceeded, that I had walked there with my brother. But also through it, I realized that I'd had... I'm very well aware of bad customer experience, and if I have a bad customer experience somewhere, I'm relatively unlikely to go back there.
0:16:39 HS: Fair enough.
0:16:39 TB: And I realized through this that I'd actually had at least two bad customer experiences, and we really shouldn't have gone back to that place.
[laughter]
0:16:48 HS: That's what it is.
0:16:48 TB: And as we can start to that, I realized that we were having the same experiences that I'd had previously, but the nature of my wife and my conversations is that we touched on so many different topics in such a short period of time, that I realized that this is... And it was probably two or three weeks in to me taking the migraine medication as well. So I thought, "Well, this is all very curious." And thankfully, by probably 1 PM, I was back to pretty regular cognition.
0:17:17 HS: Are you still taking the migraine medication?
0:17:20 TB: Yeah, I'm still taking the medication. I'm trying to mix it up a bit because it works for periods of time, and I take it just as I arrive at work, so I have the maximum exposure through work; but the problem with that is that it means at 3 AM, I wake up bolt upright because the medication is worn off over that period. And I can only take one of these pills per day, of the particular variety...
0:17:44 HS: What would happen if you took it three hours later?
0:17:46 TB: Well, that's where it gets particularly curious. So I have three layers of pills, one that I'm supposed to take daily, one that I'm supposed to take at the onset of migraine, and one to take if that doesn't work. The one that I take if that doesn't work, there's like a one in three chance of me having a heavy opioid effect from it.
0:18:04 HS: Have you tried vitamin M?
0:18:06 TB: Well this is where it gets particularly curious, because I've certainly... I'm getting heavily inclined to, but within that, there's still a vast... It's even more...
0:18:17 HS: Well no, it's just a test. That's all. Who knows? [chuckle] It might just do nothing.
0:18:24 TB: And I think the interesting thing here is that there's a variety of different medication around this. The heavy opiate one just makes me useless. I might as well be stoned in that circumstance because...
0:18:34 HS: Yeah, you just go ahead and have a migraine. [chuckle]
0:18:36 TB: Because I can't... So last Thursday at work, a week ago, I took the heaviest one with the view that I had one in three chance of it not being the opiate one, or two in three. And it was an opiate like in spirits, and I was at work for...
0:18:51 HS: What is the opiate like? You mean sleepy, tired?
0:18:54 TB: No, my brain just goes completely fuzzy. I've taken... What have I taken previously? I've taken Valium, and I've taken OxyContin for a back injury.
0:19:04 HS: I've never taken drugs like that, so I have...
0:19:06 TB: Well you took OxyContin, right? You've got some OxyContin and tried it, and you didn't get any effect.
0:19:10 HS: No... No.
0:19:10 TB: Yes. Four or five years ago, we had a discussion associated with you taking OxyContin.
0:19:15 HS: Okay. Well [chuckle], that's part of my memory that's gone.
0:19:19 TB: It's in the audio. It's in the audio. Well maybe we...
0:19:20 HS: Yeah, that's fine.
0:19:22 TB: Yeah. Anyway...
0:19:22 HS: In any case, it didn't leave much of an impression. [chuckle]
0:19:25 TB: No, it left no impression on you. It was actually very interesting, we had a good conversation about that. So yeah, it's a very strange thing with the headaches currently, but this experience of having no memory obviously reminds me of you. And I thought to myself, what good would I be in this... Thankfully, I haven't woken up one morning, gone to work, and have this happen. Because if I got into work, and had no memory...
[chuckle]
0:19:48 HS: Well, when you say "no memory," again, it's never gonna be the exact same experience. That similar experience at work may or may not... Who knows what it'll be.
0:19:58 TB: But in the period of time with the medication, what have you, having half a day where... And I guess because... And this is something I've done recently. So for example, I was having a conversation at lunch with some of my co-workers, and I forgot the name of a fellow. And I went back, in fact, had the little task waiting to get the name back. And about an hour later, I had the guy's name back in my head. So within those circumstances, I have a pretty good recall. I've got a bunch of repressed stuff, which comes back periodically if I think very hard about certain things. But...
0:20:31 HS: Wait. I don't understand that, what you repressed.
0:20:34 TB: I have incidents in my childhood and things like that, that I have no need for in my primary reflective memory, and...
0:20:42 HS: Jesus, see, the thing is, I don't re... Really more than five minutes ago, [chuckle] and I just don't give a shit.
0:20:50 TB: Well, we've had conversations about your childhood where in discussing it, you've recalled things that you thought you'd forgotten.
0:20:56 HS: Oh yeah, I have. Yeah, yeah. A lot of stuff has come back, or... No, some stuff has come back. And if I work at it really hard, if I... If some flicker of something shows up, and if I sit down and sorta concentrate, I can get some of it back. But basically, it's all just very vague to me. It's just fleeting images here and there, and some words and...
0:21:20 TB: Yeah. It's interesting actually because a large portion of the memory that I don't have primary access to comes through my school years. And that was mainly because it was just very repetitive, and really is nothing that I need now in terms of knowledge or reflection or things like that. And it's certainly been interesting with this Noble Ape project because I've got a couple of plastic boxes full of documents and other things, and I was going through them last weekend, and found a bunch of things that I posted to Facebook. Now I kind of know that I have those things, but to actually have them in my hands gives a different sense of them. But I realized that I probably actually have more documentation than I can think of at any given time associated with the history of my life.
[chuckle]
0:22:07 HS: I got something like three million files on my hard drive. [laughter] Right.
0:22:16 TB: Yeah, I found some... I had about 20 VHS tapes that I've culled down to three now. And I'm actually going through media very seriously currently in terms of just reducing it. In terms of computer files and these kind of things, I tried to do a backup of a bunch of DVD, burnt DVD, ROM things, and CD-ROMs that I had, but none of the data... I mean, aside from the photos, which are again fleeting, none of that data really has any contemporary meaning because the important stuff in almost all cases, as it exists in software and writing and things like that, I've tried to get out. It exists externally from me. And the beauty of this audio as well is that most of my productive time and energy is catalogued perfectly on the Internet Archive.
0:23:03 HS: Well, I'm still [chuckle] trying to figure out what the hell my legacy is gonna be.
[chuckle]
0:23:10 TB: Yes, many people spend a lifetime working on that, Heron.
0:23:15 HS: No, I don't think many do at all.
0:23:16 TB: Well sorry, the people that I've met, people like Wozniak for example, spend a lifetime working on their legacy.
0:23:21 HS: Yeah. I never thought about it in those terms, but I... Even though my plan is to live 10,000. And actually, who knows? [chuckle] That's still my plan.
0:23:32 TB: Hoarders also have this notion of a legacy as well. There are certain groups in society... Have you spent any quality time with a hoarder?
0:23:42 HS: A hoarder?
0:23:42 TB: Yes.
0:23:43 HS: No, other than myself. I'm sort of borderline on that...
0:23:49 TB: I've seen your room, Heron. You're nothing like a hoarder.
0:23:52 HS: I know, I know. Well, you should see other places I've lived. [chuckle] I've cured myself.
0:24:00 TB: You've cured yourself, yes.
0:24:00 HS: Yeah.
0:24:01 TB: But certainly the serious hoarders, I lived... My mother had an eccentric friend who I told you about who died in the mental institution. She would have conniption fits if you threw away a piece of paper that was on the ground.
0:24:15 HS: Yeah, I know. It was... Well, they're fucking crazy people...
0:24:17 TB: Yeah, the psychology of hoarders is they constantly think of their junk as their legacy as well. This is where it gets really interesting.
[laughter]
0:24:24 HS: It is their legacy.
0:24:25 TB: Yes, exactly.
0:24:26 HS: Nobody gives a shit about it.
0:24:28 TB: Yes. [chuckle] Yes, we could all learn a little from that perhaps.
0:24:29 HS: It would be so much easier if people just told them the truth. [chuckle]
0:24:32 TB: Yes.
0:24:34 HS: "Man, you're fucked up. Nobody gives a shit about this crap you're doing." [chuckle]
0:24:39 TB: Yeah. [chuckle] "And enough of the cats already." Yes. We've been... Over the past few recordings, we've been dissecting a topic associated with being a hermit, versus being someone who is out in either a physical society or a digital society. And we've done this through a variety...
0:25:00 HS: Wait a minute. I don't see... That's not my dichotomy, I hope.
0:25:04 TB: Actually, we've kind of talked about it through your perspective. We've not talked about it explicitly as I framed it here. What we've said is...
0:25:12 HS: Okay. So what is it that we're talking about then?
0:25:15 TB: On one side, the hermitage. And on the other side, the benefits of interacting with a broader, sometimes dubious society.
0:25:25 HS: Yeah. I don't see a dichotomy there. I think you can do both. [chuckle] It's just you have to use your time consciously for specific atmospheres. And in fact, I'm gonna be a lot less hermit-like in the coming years. [chuckle]
0:25:42 TB: So you're organizing future talks? Or how are you doing it explicitly?
0:25:46 HS: Well, I... Like I say, I'm not... I'm still on sabbatical, this is my third year now. [chuckle] And I don't know. Right now, I'm just looking at this Google things, and get that going, and...
0:25:57 TB: Is it your third or fourth year?
0:26:00 HS: This is the beginning of the third. I've done two years.
0:26:04 TB: Okay. It feels longer than that.
0:26:06 HS: Yeah, I don't know. If it does, it does, but that's how long it's been. [chuckle]
0:26:11 TB: Did we start talking again in... I think we started talking again in 2012, where you were already partway through your sabbatical.
0:26:20 HS: No. Maybe I might have used that. Who knows? If it's important to you, go back and dig it up.
0:26:25 TB: Look it up, yeah.
[chuckle]
0:26:27 HS: I don't care. [chuckle]
0:26:29 TB: Yeah. I think there's... Well anyway, I'll go back and look, and tell you next recording whether this is your third or fourth year.
0:26:34 HS: That's hard... Well yeah. You probably know better than I do. So go for it.
0:26:40 TB: Yeah. [chuckle] In any case, but the sabbatical intentionally is not about going out amongst the people, although you did attend a variety of meetups, right?
0:26:47 HS: Well, no, it's not about that. It's just about... Like I say, I'm actually having to sort of re-invent myself. I've been a researcher for 30 years. And now I'm having to become a salesman, [chuckle] and build an organization, put all the curriculum together, do...
0:27:08 TB: Do you think the notion of a Gendo salesman is a paradox, in terms of...
0:27:14 HS: We don't need that language. Obviously, it's gonna be crucial to get this... Sales is just a way of looking at it in this culture. The question is, how many students do you attract, and how much influence do the ideas have on the society? How it gets funded [chuckle] is a separate issue. But the... And that's why capitalism in one sense works because the amount of money you make is... At least the idea is, it is reflective of how popular your product is.
0:27:48 TB: Yes. Or at least in a very... The past 70 years version of...
0:27:54 HS: Well again, the issue here is to change the way the people of Earth think. So that seems... At this point, it's just sort of to get that idea established among a small group of people, that that's not a crazy idea. And again, I think this was a crazy idea 20 years ago, but it's not really that crazy an idea. It's just about marketing...
0:28:21 TB: It's interesting actually because 20 years ago, certainly associated with your journals, you were considerably more proactive associated with...
0:28:31 HS: Yeah, I actually thought I knew what the fuck I was doing at the time.
0:28:34 TB: Yeah. Yeah.
[chuckle]
0:28:35 HS: And of course, every time I did something, I found out I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. [laughter]
0:28:43 TB: I don't know... I don't... I guess I get that since we're talking to you now, but your journals at the time at least didn't convey that. It conveyed a sense of detailed planning of scenarios. And it's almost like... Obviously, I didn't know anything about you in the squish world. It was just what was written in the journals.
0:29:02 HS: Yeah, yeah.
0:29:03 TB: But it does seem at some stage in the journals you just gave up.
0:29:07 HS: Well, I have no idea because I don't look at them from that perspective. That's your...
0:29:13 TB: Well, I don't know if... Yes, yes.
[chuckle]
0:29:15 HS: I'll accept that.
0:29:17 TB: But for extended scholarship on the journals, they're both available in the Stone Ape feed, and also on the Internet Archive, or you can pay money for them on Scribd or something, Scribd, which is where they originally went.
0:29:29 HS: Yeah. Well I need to polish my skills with the Internet Archive, I guess, at some point, 'cause that's certainly part of my legacy.
0:29:37 TB: Yes.
0:29:38 HS: I guess that could be a... If there's anything I want to leave, I could leave it there. [chuckle]
0:29:43 TB: Yeah. All the journals are on the Internet Archive now, and your fonts and various other things that you said put up on the Internet Archive.
0:29:50 HS: Oh really? I'll have to go. And how will I find it there?
0:29:53 TB: You just search Stone Ape in the Internet Archive, and it's all in PDF...
0:29:56 HS: Stone Ape? Okay, all right.
0:29:57 TB: Documentation. It is all there.
0:30:00 HS: Yeah, cool.
0:30:00 TB: So I had an interesting experience through the week.
0:30:03 HS: Uh-oh.
0:30:03 TB: And it related to this notion that I could do a Kickstarter with software associated with this 20 years of Noble Ape. And I already had this sense going into it that there was probably gonna be some... Something that would just eliminate that as a possibility. And very similar actually to the Australian Film Commission grant, which eliminated doing something with software and Kickstarter, was the notion that there would be a product at the end of the Kickstarter. And I reflected heavily on this, and I thought, "Well I'm producing eight to 12 audio tracks, that's the product through this. So I need to be not Tom Barbalet, software engineer; but Tom Barbalet, musician in order to get this Kickstarter thing together," which is pretty curious.
0:30:47 TB: And I've had a pseudonym that my wife presented me maybe three or four months ago, that I think I'm actually going to... I'll do the Kickstarter as me, but I will say I will release this audio under a pseudonym. And I have a pseudonym set up for that. And the music that's being produced, every song that's being produced in the past couple of days under this realization is very, very different to the stuff that I've recorded up until now. It's almost... It's not a liberation, it's a sense that I have to do this thing, and I have to do this thing in a very particular way in order to be a music Kickstarter. And a few people have launched music Kickstarters, where it's their first musical thing. And the way in which they do it typically is by releasing two or three audio tracks or YouTube clips to just kind of warm up the community to who they are musically. And that's the road I have to follow here, so I have very limited options.
0:31:37 HS: Oh you've got all the options in the universe.
0:31:40 TB: Well under Kickstarter's rules, I have a small subset of those options.
0:31:44 HS: Yeah. Oh okay... Yeah. But that's... Yeah. As long as you're gonna play that game, yes, you're...
0:31:48 TB: Yes, exactly.
0:31:48 HS: But that does simplify things though on the other hand.
0:31:52 TB: Without question. Yeah, yeah. No, it's kosher cooking all over, like your completely reduced ingredient list. And it's also a test associated with... Well actually, by doing it under a pseudonym, I don't have any of the problems associated with the legacy of Noble Ape. But it's all very curious now, it seems to be becoming something that's considerably more elaborate than what I had originally anticipated.
0:32:12 HS: Well that's because that's what you're creating. [chuckle]
0:32:14 TB: Exactly. Yeah, I'm not denying...
0:32:17 HS: You're not complaining about it.
0:32:19 TB: I'm not denying responsibility nor complaining here. It just strikes me when I have a waking, conscious moment, what will that... We talked... When did we talk, last night, or the night before?
0:32:27 HS: Oh I don't know...
0:32:28 TB: Anyway, we talked sometime in the evening, and you messaged me like halfway through like doing some editing on the track, and I had to do the completion. That's one thing I'm doing in the evenings, is I have to complete the work. Otherwise, I feel like I'm not actually achieving anything...
0:32:43 HS: You would be right. [chuckle]
0:32:43 TB: Yes. I had to complete the work, so I said to you, "I can't... "
0:32:46 HS: Yeah. That's one of your greatest...
0:32:49 TB: Achievements.
0:32:49 HS: Graces that you have. [chuckle]
0:32:52 TB: What? That I need to complete work, or that I politely tell you that I'll talk to you in a few minutes?
0:32:56 HS: Well no, that you do what needs to be done.
0:33:01 TB: Yes.
0:33:01 HS: And it needs to be done.
0:33:02 TB: Yes.
0:33:02 HS: The good thing is I don't have any pressure on me to get anything done, [chuckle] so I'm not feeling the pressure to get it done, really.
0:33:12 TB: Yeah. But it is an interesting motivation because I'm certainly someone who works under pressure... That's all the time through my career, and applying it in these circumstances will yield something completely different than if I was just tinkering along, and this was gonna be a secondary project.
0:33:28 HS: Yeah, yeah. Well see, that's part of the transition that I'm going through from being a researcher to a salesperson, [chuckle] is just redefining all sorts of things. Yeah.
0:33:44 TB: It's interesting. I return to this whole notion of a Gendo salesperson though. When you liberate or at least learn about the language machine, I could think of it in two ways. Firstly...
0:33:57 HS: I don't think you need sales. No, the people... See, that's the thing, I suspect that we oughta do public things and stuff that I really can't see... Anyone who does Gendo is our sales, that is our sales... Yeah, there's... Obviously, if somebody wants to take the training, they'd call, or they go to the internet, and there has to be a way for them to do that, and all that... But I don't give a shit about that. That's all stuff that everybody already knows how to do, so that's simple really.
0:34:30 TB: Well that's interesting actually. I was supposed to have a conversation with a rapper last Sunday, and the rapper stood me up.
0:34:37 HS: Oh the guy stood you up? [chuckle]
0:34:39 TB: Yeah. And I thought to myself...
0:34:43 HS: Did you hear anything at all? That's it, he just... You never heard anything?
0:34:46 TB: His "assistant" contacted me after I emailed saying, "Okay, so let's talk at 10. It's 10:30 now, maybe we should reschedule." And the assistant sent me back this email that was just full of non-sequiturs. It was kind of an excuse, but it wasn't really an excuse. And then I said, "Look, let's do it next week. At the same time, can you please email me an hour in advance?"
0:35:11 HS: Boy, you just don't learn, do you?
0:35:13 TB: Well I should just tell her to fuck off, and get on with my life?
0:35:15 HS: No, you shouldn't tell them anything. I wouldn't even bother to call them. That's the end of it. IF they don't call me, they don't give a shit about me. Fuck 'em.
0:35:27 TB: Yes. Well I think that's clear.
0:35:28 HS: I got no use for... I don't need that in my life.
0:35:31 TB: Well I founded the Kickstarter primarily to have the Skype call, to see if I could do a 10-minute Skype call with this individual. You need to appreciate that the language of like rap music is just a sequence of "You know what I'm saying," these kind of...
0:35:50 HS: Yeah, it's a whole bunch of... Oh, it's perfect [chuckle] Gendo material.
0:35:56 TB: Yes, it's just what I think it is.
0:35:56 HS: It's just... They've got a slightly different way of using reification. Yeah.
0:36:02 TB: Yeah, for extended conversations that is just succinctly reified.
0:36:04 HS: Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. And it's full of stuff that are... Interchangeable words, with different rhythm. It's a great medium. That's the medium.
0:36:15 TB: Yeah. But it did make me reflect to the fact that I don't live in a society like that. I live in a society that's fundamentally useless in terms of the city, and they behave even worse than not calling me. But in my general interactions with people, people are on time, they're polite, they interact with me without... And it seems almost like...
0:36:36 HS: Boy, you must live... Well, that's because you live in a really restricted little part of the universe, [chuckle] where that shit happens.
0:36:45 TB: Well, in part. But it's interesting because...
0:36:48 HS: That's rare in the world...
0:36:49 TB: Yes, no, exactly. No, I don't doubt that, but I actually quite like that almost all the people I deal with actually want to deal with me on some level. There's a certain degree of existential respect that people who interact with me have with me. And the people who don't interact with me with that respect, don't interact with me. That's...
0:37:10 HS: Right, yeah. Yeah, it works out just great. [chuckle]
0:37:13 TB: Yeah. But I did pay for this Kickstarter. I did pay for the chance to talk with this guy. Now look, if they stand me up this weekend, that's it.
0:37:21 HS: Like I say, you're much more forgiving than I am. [chuckle] We'll see.
0:37:28 TB: Yeah. I had the first experience as well of someone...
0:37:30 HS: So you have a date and time...
0:37:32 TB: Yes.
0:37:33 HS: To call him on Skype?
0:37:34 TB: No, he's calling me. I don't have any Skype details for him, which is another thing where... It's one of these blind points where... This is how these things happen because I have no means of contacting him. I've got the silly assistant of his, and there's no way that I can contact him.
0:37:52 HS: Why are you gonna interview this guy?
0:37:55 TB: I think it's an interesting principle. He worked with some interesting producers on his most recent recording, and if he can talk coherently about actually working with these producers, then it might be useful. It could be... And look, my view is 90% likelihood of it just being...
0:38:10 HS: Just another language monkey. Yeah, you're right.
0:38:13 TB: Incoherent garble.
0:38:13 HS: Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah.
0:38:15 TB: Plus some nonsense associated with my accent.
0:38:16 HS: And some attitude. [chuckle]
0:38:16 TB: And some attitude. Yes. All of the above. All worst possible case scenario stuff.
0:38:24 HS: Yeah. But that takes about two minutes to figure that out. [chuckle]
0:38:29 TB: Exactly... Yes.
0:38:29 HS: But you gotta go... You certainly can't do it in text. Yeah, you have to be talking to him.
0:38:33 TB: And 10 AM on a Sunday is not particularly ideal for me, but I'm willing to do it.
0:38:39 HS: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, give... Well, this is a learning for both of you. [chuckle]
0:38:46 TB: Certainly. Well, I don't think it'll be a learning for him. I have another interesting thing occur through the week. A gentleman who was banned from Model Rail Radio has contacted me in order to try and get back on Model Rail Radio.
0:39:00 HS: Did he apologize profusely?
0:39:01 TB: No, he didn't. That's where it's particularly curious. None of the correspondence equates to an apology, nor does it equate to... And I contacted a few of the people that he'd offended, and none of it actually has translated to him contacting these other people and apologizing to them either. So yeah.
[chuckle]
0:39:18 HS: Well, have you asked him about that?
0:39:20 TB: Well he's using these... The whole thing was very curious. I think I'll just stop corresponding with him, and...
0:39:25 HS: Well, that would be one. Yeah. You just say, "Go away. Goodbye."
0:39:29 TB: Yes. Yeah. But it is an interesting circumstance to even have this kind of interactions, I guess.
0:39:36 HS: See, these are the kinds of things that I don't involve myself with. [chuckle]
0:39:40 TB: But you may have to through... If you're out amongst people. That's the thing, right?
0:39:45 HS: Yeah. I'm sure, yeah. It would benefit... I'm gonna have somebody else deal with... If it turns into a problem, then it'll have to be because there's something going on, and I can hire people. [chuckle] And then... I have no idea how that's gonna work, but I think I can manage it. Yeah, with a good spam filter. [chuckle]
0:40:10 TB: Well it's not about spam filtration so much, it's about people that get into your proximity, in both the physical and also like a digital sense. And I'm thinking... I've been thinking in terms of...
0:40:21 HS: What does that mean, "in your proximity"?
0:40:23 TB: Well, they interact with you for a period of time, to a point where you feel comfortable with these individuals communicating with you or what have you. And then for whatever reason, it all goes to shit.
[laughter]
0:40:37 HS: Yeah, sure. That's totally possible.
0:40:39 TB: This has happened frequently.
0:40:41 HS: Listen, I've been involved. I've had a couple of those. I've been actually attacked, not physically, but really snuck up on, and then stabbed [chuckle] because I rolled over to get my belly rubbed. [chuckle]
0:41:01 TB: Yeah. And the knives came out.
[laughter]
0:41:03 HS: It was a good job, and quite a learning experience for me. [laughter]
0:41:06 TB: Yes. I've been reflecting on particularly through our discussions where you just said, "Well that's just your story in this kind of stuff, in our general interaction." Whether it's actually possible to be... I always use the term "post-Stonian", but let's just say, having learned and absorbed and then actively enact post-language monkey behavior, whether any form of social interaction in like the current society is actually possible.
0:41:35 HS: Oh, I have no... I would say, it's almost pointless to speculate in that. What would a planet of enlightened beings...
0:41:43 TB: No, I'm not talking about a planet of enlightened beings. What I'm talking about is, if someone does your course, moves through the beginner, intermediate and then advance coursework, when they come out on the other side, do they have... Are they post-surviving in a language monkey world, like in the actual interactions that you have to have with language monkeys, constant reifications, constant...
0:42:05 HS: Well, no, you don't have to actually... You can play their game, but you can know that you're playing the game while you're playing it.
0:42:11 TB: Well, let's...
0:42:12 HS: It's easy 'cause it's already programmed into all of us. The problem is to un-program ourselves from it.
0:42:18 TB: Well consider, for example, a child that is raised in a Gendo household.
0:42:24 HS: Yeah, yeah. I can hardly imagine that. See, that's what I'm saying, is that if I was raised or if anybody was raised the way I sort of imagine it in my fantasy, I simply cannot predict what the hell they would do. I have no idea. I bet it would be amazing though. [laughter]
0:42:45 TB: I guess it's... What I'm thinking of here, I have a few survival tools that aren't necessarily language-based, you might disagree when I describe them to you. The first survival tool I have is when I meet someone who has similar characteristics to another person that I've met previously, or usually a large group of other people I've met previously, I think...
0:43:05 HS: Okay, he's one of those.
0:43:06 TB: Yes. And then I interact with them accordingly. And in almost all cases, that is a really good or strong survival technique.
0:43:14 HS: Yeah. That's a good starting assumption, yeah, if it's that apparent. But also equally important is to be open to the fact...
0:43:24 TB: The possibility that it's another...
0:43:26 HS: The possibility that you're wrong.
0:43:26 TB: Exactly, exactly.
0:43:28 HS: Yeah, and then you've got your ass covered in every direction. [chuckle]
0:43:32 TB: Yeah. But within that survival concept, within the concept of the archetype, it will be very easy to construct a... Well, like a Stonian deconstruction of that, that the archetype is actually associated with a lot of prior language, a lot of prior assumptions, probably...
0:43:49 HS: Well it is a story.
0:43:50 TB: Exactly.
0:43:50 HS: It's a story...
0:43:51 TB: Exactly.
0:43:52 HS: In the language.
0:43:53 TB: So if you remove... Or if you learn from, and then start to question the nature of a story and language, what survival skills in order to interact with language monkeys could you possess?
0:44:05 HS: Well, you haven't lost anything. [chuckle] You still have your old operating system. Like I say, the problem is really extricating yourself from that, but you don't have to destroy it. It's easy to deal with them, as long as you're able to sort of set the parameters. That's the issue. That's why I became a hermit, more or less, is, yeah, I can deal with humans, but I just don't find it all that much fun. [chuckle] And there are plenty of people who like doing that stuff. [chuckle] And I like doing it under certain circumstances. So that's the issue. If I can be in control of the situation, then that's different. And if not, then I just as soon not be there. [laughter]
0:44:51 TB: Yes. For probably about three weeks now, the Political Compass, which is a sight that I think should be compulsory viewing for the Stone Ape listening audience, if nothing more than to completely contradict every political piece of news that comes out in the US in particular, but also pretty well the world over.
[laughter]
0:45:18 HS: Good for them.
0:45:18 TB: Now the positions are...
0:45:19 HS: And they do it when they're naked too, or they have clothes on?
0:45:25 TB: I'm not sure. I've not inquired that deeply. But the Political Compass has come out with where the politicians in the current US election stand on their particular... To... Well, it's 20 by 20 box grid graph. And as expected... In fact, I thought he was considerably more authoritarian than this, but they can only go by what they say, not by what they... Well, what they do...
0:45:51 HS: By what you know they really mean.
0:45:53 TB: Well, no. I think what's interesting is that when Obama became president, he said a bunch of stuff, but his actions were directly in opposition to a lot of what he said. And the Political Compass when people are actually in office, their actions are what contributes to the Political Compass measuring.
0:46:12 HS: Sure, yeah.
0:46:13 TB: This is what they say. In the case of Sanders, I think they focus too much on what he said, but still, he was just on the cusp of authoritarian libertarian. So he's in the kind of middle section, but over slightly to the left.
0:46:25 HS: He's very opinionated. He actually believes everything [chuckle] he hears himself saying, I think.
0:46:29 TB: What's even more curious is that a lot of what he says, the president can't actually do. Like he has a narrative which doesn't acknowledge the deficiencies of the president, in terms of being able to enact the stuff that he talks about. He could...
0:46:45 HS: Yeah. Well, see, that's the thing, two-tenths of one-hundredth of one percent of the voting population even conceive of the distinctions.
0:46:58 TB: Well, that's where the Political Compass comes in.
0:47:00 HS: Yeah, yeah. So if he's gonna become president, he's gotta play that game. [chuckle]
0:47:05 TB: Yes, yeah. Anyway, I look at the Political Compass, every time on survey, they might do it maybe once every two years, I am in the bottom two squares to the left. In fact, I think if I stopped working for a corporation, I would not be on the political compass graph. I'm just so far to the libertarian left. And the curious thing is that the whole term "libertarian" isn't understood in the US because there's been one candidate over the past 20 years that's completely polluted the term "libertarian".
[chuckle]
0:47:41 HS: Welcome to English.
0:47:42 TB: Yeah. Well, it's not... No, it's just that people don't understand that these words have independent meanings, that the terms...
0:47:50 HS: No, no, you don't understand that independent meanings are fucking irrelevant, that's exactly what you're complaining about.
0:47:55 TB: To the US voter... To the US voter.
0:48:00 HS: To most human beings. Most people are totally unconscious of this shit. Whatever they think is what they think.
0:48:06 TB: Exactly, which is right, right?
0:48:08 HS: Of course, this is what I think. And as we know, what I think is the way the world and universe really is structured. So fuck you. [laughter]
0:48:19 TB: Yes. Believe me, I feel that everyday. I feel that everyday here. The spit lands on my head as I shower everyday. The universe is...
0:48:30 HS: It's terrifying. [chuckle] Really, the depth of the hypnosis is something terrifying. But on the other hand, that's part of what's so liberating about it. The depth of the hypnosis is so deep, and it only takes, what? 30 seconds to wake up from the trance.
0:48:48 TB: What I have come to realize over the past week, that I already knew on some level, was the only folks that would ever participate in this election are authoritarian to their core, that the whole nature of voting is an authoritarian pursuit. Which I think is why we have a reduction of voters every election, and also why the politicians tend to move more and more authoritarian every election.
0:49:13 HS: Yeah, I think it has something to do with the perceived need... Well they're... No, that's it, they're just all fucking crazy language monkeys. That's the only answer, man. [laughter] You can analyze it all you want.
0:49:24 TB: Well, it's particularly curious when you look at what's... To use like freedom on this kind of things. Because they've completely re-branded it to mean exactly the opposite. And particularly curious is that the most authoritarian folk in our society, that are actually empowering the political system, are the ones who claim to be most violently against politicians in government.
0:49:51 HS: Yeah. And that's the other thing, is that the government, that's just one little part of the power structure on the planet. The corporate thing, and the military, and the... All of that on a global scale is a huge integrated system now.
0:50:11 TB: Certainly. Yes.
0:50:13 HS: But it's all... And most of that, you could just send all those people home, and nobody would miss it at all. [laughter]
0:50:23 TB: Yeah. It's a beautiful thing.
0:50:26 HS: Oh yeah. So yeah, we got a lot of work ahead of us though. [laughter]
0:50:29 TB: We do, we do, yeah. I realized, looking at the graph, and looking at how far away I was from everyone, these kind of things, that this whole political thing probably only irritates me because it...
0:50:41 HS: Yeah, I don't pay any attention to it.
0:50:43 TB: The primaries and the caucuses, have you even fathomed what this thing is all about?
0:50:47 HS: No, I just have no interest in tales of how the caterpillar is struggling to survive.
0:50:52 TB: Yeah, I guess I watched it in documentary form, with that kind of view, that it's something that we still at least...
0:50:58 HS: Well maybe my focus is on what the hell's coming, and what are we creating here. That's where my focus is. And to some extent, it's good. Actually, I know a lot more history than almost anybody I know. But...
0:51:13 TB: You participated in some of it, right, Heron?
0:51:15 HS: Yeah, yeah. Well anyway, I've read a lot of shit and studied a lot of shit for a long time. And...
0:51:23 TB: I discovered there's a thing called Gallipoli, which is in the First World War, where basically a bunch of British generals decided to put the world's cannon fodder, here Australia and New Zealand, on beaches that were covered with machine gun nests, and things like that. What I didn't realize was that Winston Churchill was one of the primary movers and shakers associated with getting this massacre happening. And what astonished me about it was that if we had been... There's a day in Australia called Anzac Day, which from my perspective at least, is about a memorialization of how Australians have been used as cannon fodder in most of the wars that they participated in, with very little respect for...
0:52:07 HS: Yeah, right. Well that makes sense, of course.
0:52:10 TB: Of course...
0:52:10 HS: What the hell else are Australians for? That's the British.
0:52:13 TB: Exactly... Yeah. They let the cub scouts... Baden-Powell used to send the scouts out over the minefields, then you realize all those Australians are cheaper than scouts. Let's push the Aussies out over the minefields, and...
0:52:26 HS: Yeah, works for me.
0:52:28 TB: Yeah. And they make such interesting sounds as they explode as well. So reflecting on this, I felt... I have a generally low view of my education as a child, that this piece of information to me, to find out just before I turn 40, well a few months before I turn 40, I thought to myself, "If only I had known this from the get-go."
0:52:50 HS: Yeah, so many things. [chuckle]
0:52:52 TB: It's not that I'm a fan of Churchill in any way, but this is a serious...
0:52:56 HS: Well what does he have to say? He must have been questioned about that.
0:53:00 TB: Oh no, this was like the damning of his life, being involved in this fiasco basically.
0:53:05 HS: Well it didn't seem to get in his way much.
0:53:07 TB: Well actually, what is said by the historians now that I know this, is remember the Dardanelles basically was an echo through his entire Second World War Prime Minister-ship as well, that he was known for this kind of buffoonish blunder. And everything else he had done kind of... And from my perspective, it changes my whole perspective as well, to see what Churchill...
0:53:31 HS: Yeah, well I don't... Like I say, see, that's the thing is, I just really don't give a shit. Yeah, I guess that's just... I watch sumo wrestling, what the fuck can I say? Who am I to talk? [chuckle]
0:53:42 TB: Yeah. Do you think sumo wrestling is like professional wrestling in this country? Do you think it's to that level of organization, where one sumo fighter goes down?
0:53:50 HS: No way.
0:53:51 TB: You think it's actually real?
0:53:52 HS: No, I think it's real.
0:53:53 TB: Mano a mano, so to speak?
0:53:55 HS: Yeah, I think there may be cases where something's going on. And there's been rumors about it for years. So there's probably a certain amount of truth, but I think for the most part, it's legit.
0:54:10 TB: Yeah. Just let the blubber fly.
0:54:11 HS: It's a little more than that.
0:54:13 TB: I know, it's a nuanced sport of mainly...
0:54:16 HS: Well, it's just what it is. What you have to realize is those guys all basically look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, plus 200 pounds of fat. And they're yoga masters, they're totally so flexible. I've seen them do full splits, laying down flat in front of me. That's a standard exercise they go through. They are stunning athletes, and the weight is part of the strategy. [chuckle] I love it, I love sumo. [chuckle]
0:54:53 TB: The bikini girls around the sumo wrestlers is always the thing that sticks in my mind.
[laughter]
0:55:01 HS: Yeah. No, but that... I'm wondering if you're being prophetic here. Is that the next Basho? [chuckle] There will be the bikini girls. [laughter]
0:55:12 TB: This is a real image, though, right?
0:55:14 HS: It's awesome, yeah, yeah. I can just see them now. [laughter] Listen, they've let in all these fucking foreigners, and all these Mongolians have taken over the yokozuna ranks and everything.
[laughter]
0:55:28 TB: You're a purist? You're a purist with sumo, or...
0:55:34 HS: Oh no, not at all, but there are some... A lot of people are though. [chuckle]
0:55:38 TB: Yes. There was a period of time in the '70s when car races were... I'm sure to a smaller percentage of the population now, but there was a period of time where... And here I think of Grand Prix races in particular, there are American races as well through this period of time, but where they were just viewed in this kind of super human way, and it was at a period of time where people died frequently.
0:56:04 HS: Oh yeah, that'll help. [chuckle]
0:56:05 TB: And then we made it... We then made it safer and safer and safer. Finally, all the sexiness just wasn't here.
[laughter]
0:56:11 HS: Yeah, there's not much point in going to the races anymore. They never burn. [chuckle]
0:56:17 TB: Yeah, no one dies. There's no notion that you'll see someone killed at the races.
0:56:20 HS: Yeah, well you'd think they'd figure that out and change the rules.
0:56:23 TB: Yeah. [chuckle] Make the cars less safe again.
0:56:26 HS: Yeah... Well no, make them go a little bit faster. That would be easy. Then they'd slide, and get into crashes and shit and everything. [chuckle]
0:56:35 TB: Yeah. I remember the late George Harrison, for a period of time, wrote... There were a bunch of... I think Paul McCartney... There were a bunch of Beatles that wrote music associated with car racing guys, and yeah, they certainly had a very romantic view. And sumo had that...
0:56:49 HS: Hell, cars were... Yeah, boy, what a part of my life, man. [chuckle] Having a car in Southern California when you're 17 years old. [chuckle]
0:57:00 TB: Beach and desert drives, I think I talked with you about at various times.
0:57:07 HS: Oh yeah, yeah. I feel so fortunate. In some ways, I should probably feel deprived, but on the other hand, I also feel really fortunate that I've... I grew up first... The first eight years of my life was before television. When I... I think that's a profound difference that I think really leaves its imprint somehow. I was out in the ditch. [chuckle]
0:57:38 TB: With your toy soldiers?
0:57:41 HS: No, no, not with my toy soldiers. I was out there with a shovel, and... [chuckle] Or a little shovel. There was clay there, there were frogs there, there were all sorts of things, and it was just cool to hang out there, and look and see what's going on. It was amazing. And then once we got a TV in the house, that was the end of that. "Fuck that, man. I'm watching TV."
0:58:08 TB: We didn't have a TV in the house till I was about six, and then it was rationed.
0:58:11 HS: Wow.
0:58:12 TB: I was allowed, I think, 15 minutes that I could bank a day... So I could go...
0:58:16 HS: Wow, 15? Oh man, that was... God, how nice. Boy, are you fortunate.
0:58:22 TB: It is interesting, actually.
0:58:24 HS: Yeah, so what did you pick?
0:58:26 TB: I tried to... Well, actually, I was allowed 15... There were some shows that I just couldn't watch because I couldn't ration my television watching in order to watch them reasonably. I think, actually, I wasn't allowed to bank it, I just had to... And it was funny because there were some shows that I never saw the end of based on that. I had a very strange kind of piecemeal view of television. But no, my parents thought it was very... They thought it was soul-destroying, basically. And I spent a good portion of my... As you say, in trenches and in gardens, and having magical adventures, and these kind of things.
0:59:00 HS: Yeah, I just feel... Well, then you and I share that. For the first six... Well, about eight years for me. The first eight years of my life, there was no television. There was radio, but that was... Radio was cool. I don't remember it very well, but... And then when the TV came, that was the end of everything. Really, from that moment on, from that afternoon when they delivered the television until I was like 50... [chuckle]
0:59:33 TB: Let's talk a little bit about this television thing because certainly, when my parents got divorced, the VCR recorder turned up, and that meant that I watched a lot more television, but I certainly was still rationed in my television because I had things that I...
0:59:47 HS: How old were you at this time?
0:59:49 TB: Probably 11, 12. I remember because I used to record Cops. It was Cops and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. They were the first two things that I got into. The ability...
1:00:00 HS: Which Arnold Schwarzenegger movie?
1:00:02 TB: Almost all of them. Okay, let's start off...
1:00:04 HS: You're starting with pre-Terminator?
1:00:07 TB: The Predator, The Terminator, Commando, which is pre-Terminator. Conan. And the other thing is Australian television allowed nudity. So I had both the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, and the nudity associated with that.
[chuckle]
1:00:19 HS: That's always a help. [chuckle]
1:00:21 TB: And Cops, in terms of just getting to see primarily Los Angeles, and then I went to Los Angeles, and this is another thing I found through my stuff. I went to Los Angeles when I was 13, and that was a life-changing experience. That made me realize that I had to come back to the US because everything I didn't like about Australia didn't exist in the US. There were a bunch of other stuff that I might not like.
1:00:43 HS: Yeah, there's plenty other shit, but at least you don't have that shit.
1:00:46 TB: The US doesn't have the burden of like the Australian nonsense.
1:00:48 HS: Yeah, you can discover a whole new bunch of bullshit over here.
1:00:50 TB: Exactly, as I have, many times.
1:00:53 HS: Yes, you have.
1:00:54 TB: But yes, in terms of this notion of freedom going out to this libertarian discussion, like true freedom, like actually having a choice not to do a bunch of stuff, the US offered so much more than Australia offered. Because Australia, you had to do certain things. You had to behave in a certain way. There was all this additional nonsense that, thankfully, I didn't have in the US. I could just exist. And it's funny actually because the UK has...
1:01:15 HS: That's not true, actually... Well it's true, it's just you pay the price for it.
1:01:19 TB: In what regard?
1:01:19 HS: You could... Well, if you don't conform to the expectations of the culture, then there's a price to be paid for that, depending upon how far out you're perceived to be.
1:01:29 TB: Well, if you can work in an office doing certain things...
1:01:32 HS: Well, I'm just saying there's a price to be paid for that.
1:01:35 TB: I've never paid that price.
1:01:36 HS: And some people can easily... Pardon?
1:01:39 TB: I've never paid that price, Heron. I don't feel on any level that I've paid any price in this country for not complying and conforming. Maybe I comply and conform in certain ways.
1:01:47 HS: Well, see... Well, I can't imagine not paying... I mean, every choice for something is a choice against other things... Well that's not true. That's one way of looking at it. There are obviously multiple things going on. Never mind. You're right, there are many...
1:02:04 TB: Time is the commodity here, as we've said on many times previously.
1:02:06 HS: Yes, time. Them time, yes.
1:02:08 TB: So if you're willing to invest the time in something, then this is a county were you can actually be rewarded through that, and some work out. Or at least not...
1:02:17 HS: It doesn't make any... Listen, the reward is being able to give it the time.
1:02:21 TB: Certainly.
1:02:22 HS: That's the reward.
1:02:24 TB: Yes.
1:02:24 HS: The question is, how much do you have to sacrifice to do that? [chuckle]
1:02:28 TB: Yes. Yes. Yes. I've been going back, and this is in parallel to doing musical stuff with Kickstarter, and listening to the Australian music, like the Australian... Fundamentally, pop music from my childhood. And when I lived in Australia, when I experienced this, I always found it really, really repressive in part, and this is really curious, because a lot of the musicians that were part of these Australian music groups were... Had grown up through the heaviest socialist period in Australia, and were all taught music at school where you never learned minor chords. You were only taught in majors for everything. And in terms of how that changed Australian music, and the perception of Australian music, and the performance of Australian music...
1:03:12 HS: What was the... Was there some point? It's hard to imagine.
1:03:17 TB: Well, some of it was through Kodály. It was like you were introduced to music through the Kodály method, which didn't have any notion of majors and minors and a chord structure. And part of it was also the fact that minors I think add to the complexity of teaching music in general, a little bit, but in sufficient...
1:03:36 HS: Well fuck, they're a part of this. You can't just ignore minor in other...
1:03:40 TB: It's particularly curious. So the way Australian music was... The way music was taught in Australian public schools meant that almost everyone could play some form of musical instrument, that they weren't...
1:03:50 HS: As long as they weren't creative or interesting. [chuckle]
1:03:52 TB: Yes, and my perspective is that that fundamentally damaged even to this day...
1:04:00 HS: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
1:04:00 TB: What is known as Australian music. And listening to this stuff is really very, very curious.
1:04:05 HS: You're a prime example. [laughter]
1:04:07 TB: Almost all I play are minors, Heron, I'm completely against the norm here. Yeah, and key changes and things like that, and the way in which it was taught... I guess probably in my circles, it was mainly recorders, ie the woodwind instrument, or the wind instrument, and keyboards. They were the two things that we were taught on...
1:04:32 HS: Recorders and keyboards?
1:04:33 TB: Yes, but mainly to...
1:04:34 HS: That's good, that's a good start.
1:04:35 TB: That's a good start.
1:04:36 HS: Which, there's nothing wrong with that.
1:04:39 TB: Many people however in other areas in Australia learned on guitars, and in that form of learning, if you're not taught the chord...
1:04:46 HS: Yeah, that's much more complex. It's good to start with something like a recorder if you start them young. If you want to start them really young, [chuckle] then the recorder would be the place to start, and then move to a keyboard.
1:05:00 TB: Yeah. Well, that's... Although I started actually with a violin, then a recorder, then a keyboard. Then I...
1:05:06 HS: Yeah, but look at you, you turn out to be a... Well, yes, you did turn out to be a professional musician. Never mind. [chuckle]
1:05:12 TB: Yes, in some way, through some rather eccentric, unusual way. Now listening to Australian music in large public... You... Thankfully with YouTube, if you search for one Australian music song in one period of time, it will immediately market you every other song that was on the pop charts, through that period of time.
1:05:35 HS: In Australia.
1:05:36 TB: In Australia, yeah.
1:05:37 HS: And how much of that was from outside? Of the top 10 charts in Australia, how much of that was from England or the US?
1:05:44 TB: That's where it gets very interesting. So I would say it's probably a 30-30 split from England and the US, with a 40% Australian music.
1:05:56 HS: Really?
1:05:56 TB: Yeah.
1:05:57 HS: In the pop charts?
1:05:58 TB: Yeah.
1:06:00 HS: Cool. That's pretty good.
1:06:01 TB: It's pretty good actually.
1:06:04 HS: Damn, well it's better than pretty good. A 33-33-33 would have been just about right. But yeah, so they got a good share. Good for them. All right.
1:06:13 TB: Yes, in some regard. But what interested me through that period of time was the...
1:06:19 HS: What matters is they like their own music. [chuckle]
1:06:23 TB: Yes. Yeah. No, it's still a phenomenon. And to be frank, I don't think it's... On that level, it's not a bad thing, but the way in which that music impacted me, particularly when I started creating music myself, because the music I created was not in the Australian genres at all.
1:06:39 HS: No, you weren't playing that game.
1:06:40 TB: That's it.
1:06:40 HS: You were playing an entirely different game.
1:06:41 TB: Completely different game.
1:06:43 HS: Yeah, right, yeah, that has nothing to do with that.
1:06:45 TB: Certainly, except it meant that I... Aside from the one national classical station that played my music within my community, my brother, in contrast, and my cousin both had... My cousin probably more than my brother have had relatively good success in the Australian music context. My cousin made it into the charts with his band. And my brother has won awards locally, like won band competitions locally, but never made it into the charts. So it's interesting. Although he has done the videography for a couple of music videos that did reasonably well. So yeah, it's an interesting thing to watch the Australian... When I listened to these songs, it is associated with just reminding myself how claustrophobic really the emotion was when I was in Australia with this. And again, we talk about modeling this.
1:07:40 HS: Why, because there is such unanimity of life assumptions, or something where...
1:07:46 TB: Yeah. That's interesting because some of the bands tried to be... A lot of it was actually impersonatery, a lot of them were trying to be...
1:07:55 HS: Were trying to be Australian...
1:07:56 TB: Americans, but with an Australian perspective. So the songs... And it's funny actually how many of these are our repressed memories because when I came back, I actually knew the words to some of these songs. And then I thought, "Oh that's this song." And I didn't actually realize that some of the bands were Australian bands, which are probably curious things, because when you go back to Australia, you hear all this music that you never hear outside of Australia 'cause they never did well enough. I can't remember what the band is, but there are a couple that emerged out of Australia. One of them has a song, Wherever You Go, You Always Take The Weather With You. And I can't remember... And that's quite...
1:08:35 HS: A good title. Yeah.
1:08:36 TB: And also obviously, Men at Work. And Men At Work, you can hear here periodically. You know, Land Down Under, and all the songs that they had. They were actually sued because Land Down Under has a secondary theme, which is like an Australian folk song, which unfortunately was copyrighted, and the copyright holder sued them. But yeah, it's interesting here because you don't have... Almost all the music is American music. You occasionally have UK folks, and very occasionally other folks, but most of the music...
1:09:09 HS: And this is during... What are you talking about, today or...
1:09:12 TB: I'm talking about today. There's a sufficient number of...
1:09:15 HS: So American popular music pretty much is dominating the global music scene, but by what percent? If you take American popular music, and then everything else, classical, jazz and everything else, and lump that as other, you got American and other, do you know what it is? What percentages they are?
1:09:33 TB: I would say it was probably higher than when I was a child in Australia, in terms of the penetration of American music. However, every year...
1:09:41 HS: What would... Just a guess, I mean that's all.
1:09:43 TB: Let me give you an example which will save this guess. Every year, it's the national "independent or alternative music station" in Australia, which is called Triple J, has a top 100. Of the top 100 over the past five years, it's probably been higher than 40% Australian music, but that is quite an eclectic group, although relatively mainstream. So probably within the group of folks that listen to that stuff, it's still 40%. But in general, I think it's probably 30% or 20%. Canada is an interesting example here. Canada requires I think 30% of the music that is played on radio to be Canadian... They actually have a law, I suppose.
[laughter]
1:10:28 HS: You're kidding me. Really?
1:10:29 TB: No, no, it's true.
1:10:30 HS: No shit? 30% of the music must be Canadian?
1:10:34 TB: I think it's something like that. Our Canadian listeners will give us the exact percentages.
1:10:38 HS: Well, I can't wait to hear about this one.
1:10:41 TB: What's interesting through that is that in every genre, it forces there to be Canadian artists, which means within jazz, or these kind of genres, it promotes...
1:10:52 HS: You have to be native-born, or can you... What makes you a Canadian?
1:10:57 TB: That's a very good question. My assumption is...
1:11:00 HS: You live there, and you record...
1:11:00 TB: My assumption is that it's published by a Canadian music company.
1:11:04 HS: Yeah, okay, yeah. Somehow Canadians are making some money off this deal.
1:11:07 TB: Yeah. It could be three guys from Leeds, and one Canadian guy. Then mysteriously, it's still Canadian music. I don't know. But it's curious to man... And in fact, a few countries do mandate that in their... It might translate to Canadian television as well. I think it might not just be more... It may be more than radio, maybe television as well, that it has to have that percentage there. It's a very curious world we live in here.
1:11:31 HS: And it's just gonna get curiouser and curiouser. It's really beginning to get kinda interesting now.
1:11:39 TB: Yeah. When you had the chat on Google Hangout with T Rose, the graphic that was shown in the YouTube or the Google Hangout YouTube clip looked like your keyboard. And I got quite excited about that 'cause I thought, "Oh Heron's actually showing his keyboard through a Google Hangout."
1:11:58 HS: I think that might have been coming from her camp.
1:12:00 TB: Yes, it was. [chuckle] So when I actually finally finished that discussion, I thought to myself, "Yes, that was her keyboard, taken at a very particular angle," and I said, "Oh, this makes more sense especially with Heron." But getting to the end, it was like, "No, that's not Heron's keyboard."
1:12:17 HS: Damn... Every time that keyboard comes up, there's this sort of wince of pain in me 'cause it's such a beautiful thing. God.
1:12:25 TB: That most of us mortals will never see.
1:12:30 HS: Well I'm beginning to think, "Shit, if I can't make money on it, then I ought to at least fuckin' just give it away to somebody," but you can't.
1:12:39 TB: At least show it.
1:12:39 HS: Yeah. No, but I'm not just... I'm thinking to give it to somebody, rather than just showing it, and let whoever rapes it [chuckle] on to it. I don't know, I'm just... Or maybe just wait and see. [chuckle] There's no big deal when I die, but that's 10,000 years from now, so there's no need to worry about that. Yeah, I like this. I do think this is the keyboard of the future of Earth. There just is no reason for another kind of keyboard, at least not in the... I don't know if this would work well in... It would be really complicated to do this in a physical piano. That would be... It may be possible, but it's beyond me to figure that out. [chuckle] But doin' it in electronics is easy. [chuckle] It's no thing.
1:13:36 TB: Yes. Yeah, I don't know. I've gone through periods of time talking with you where I've thought I'd be really interested in seeing the keyboard. And then I've thought, "What happens if it disappoints, like in terms of the initial interaction?"
1:13:46 HS: Well then you just don't... It's not for you, that's all.
1:13:49 TB: Yeah. You did show it to a guy, an investor guy, recently, maybe two, three years ago?
1:13:54 HS: Yeah, somethin' like that. Yeah. He was not impressed.
1:13:58 TB: Yeah. Could you say that in the answer?
1:14:00 HS: But neither was I. [chuckle]
1:14:01 TB: You weren't impressed with him, yes. Could you see him not being impressed in the initial interaction, or was it the fact that he didn't contact you following?
1:14:09 HS: No, no, he was really full of himself, and who he is, and what his world is all about, and what he's doing here. And I could have played to that, but I'm not interested in working with somebody like that. And I'm not gonna try and correct him, so I tried to be polite, and then he left, and that was the end of it. [chuckle] Yeah. It's not bad though. That was a good experience for me.
1:14:46 TB: Does it still have software that runs the music creation part of it? Is it like a MIDI setup, or...
1:14:52 HS: Oh yeah. It's got a MIDI output, so you can take it directly into a computer, or any MIDI thing.
1:15:00 TB: So it doesn't make sound itself?
1:15:01 HS: No, but I... Well it does, it makes sound through the headphones. I haven't played it in more than a year, or I don't know, or two years.
1:15:10 TB: When you played it last time, the guy showed up to look at it, right?
1:15:13 HS: Well that was a long time ago. [chuckle]
1:15:16 TB: Well it was a couple of years ago.
1:15:18 HS: Yeah. I don't think I've played it since then. Yeah. There's just other things to do. Again, that was a good thing. It would be nice to be done with all this language bullshit, [chuckle] then maybe I'll get on the big thing.
1:15:33 TB: Why don't you do it as a Kickstarter?
1:15:34 HS: Do what?
1:15:35 TB: The keyboard.
1:15:37 HS: I had never really thought about that. That's... I don't know. I don't...
1:15:42 TB: In terms of the manufacture, the initial manufacture was 50,000, right?
1:15:44 HS: No, it was less than that. I think... I don't know, I think it was closer to 30 probably.
1:15:52 TB: Okay. But it was in that ballpark?
1:15:52 HS: But that was a one-time deal. But of course, I've re-designed it, but of course, it's cheaper now. The re-design I've done is far more efficient than the one I've actually got, and cheaper to make. [chuckle]
1:16:10 TB: It's an interesting thing associated with getting excited about a design or a technology. Something rather curious happened over the past few weeks, my wife has insisted, although we've only done this a few times, that we have a games night roughly once a week, and we get together and we roll dice and we play. I think we played Yahtzee and these kind of games. And I said, "Well why don't we play one of the war games," that my friend when he came a year ago, we played some war games. We actually went down, bought some figures, and he painted them up, and we actually played... My wife and I and he played war games.
1:16:46 TB: And I said, "You can go on eBay and buy these armies relatively cheaply," kind of gave myself a $200 budget, and a large box has arrived with these neatly painted little figures, and I pulled them out, and I put them together, and this kind of stuff. And I've been thinking to myself that nothing has provided the kind of youthful excitement in my life, like actually everything these... And they're all pre-painted now 'cause the guys who sold them sold them pre-painted. These little...
1:17:11 HS: That's the whole point, right? You actually have to be sort of an artist to be able to do that.
1:17:17 TB: Certainly, yeah. And most of us just slap paint on what have you. So it's interesting, actually, the kinds of things that excite people because I felt really... Looking at them and all this kind of stuff, arranging them and putting them into boxes, and this kind of stuff...
1:17:29 HS: These are the ones you posted the pictures of?
1:17:31 TB: Yeah, the first group. And then I did a bunch of orcs, which are considerably more chaotic, and they've all got different things on them, and they're considerably less uniform than the space beings I posted. I guess what I'm saying here is, it's difficult to predict what is going to excite people in terms of aesthetics and learning and stuff like that. When I get done, I've got an E-mu keyboard, which is probably three-quarters of a full piano keyboard in terms of the keys. But when I get that out, I can play it for two, three hours, and record all these bits from it.
1:18:04 HS: Sure. Yeah. Right.
1:18:05 TB: And it's great fun. I could say actually, it's something I enjoy doing. And it's cathartic, and I get to experiment and choose maybe...
1:18:12 HS: And if you were really lucky, you could play it on a Stone X keyboard, and it would be a liberating experience.
1:18:21 TB: Yes. Well, that's interesting actually because I think...
1:18:23 HS: No more keys, no more concern for shifting keys.
1:18:27 TB: Yeah. We've discussed historically, and I guess I spent... I don't know... I didn't really get a sense of how many years you spent playing the piano.
1:18:37 HS: Oh on and off for 20 years.
1:18:39 TB: Yeah. Well, obviously, you...
1:18:41 HS: I can play a few Bach two-part inventions and a couple of Haydn pieces and shit, but now, fuck, I can't play the piano.
1:18:50 TB: Yeah. Aside from my own compositions, I did learn the piano for probably four or five years of weekly lessons. But I don't feel comfortable playing any of that. So the only stuff I feel comfortable playing is really my own stuff because that's where I get the most enjoyment out of it in the shortest possible time. And things like scales actually, which came up in a...
1:19:11 HS: Yeah, that's the problem with the old keyboard, isn't it? How interesting.
1:19:15 TB: Yeah. You have to learn.
1:19:16 HS: Hello, can you hear me?
1:19:17 TB: Yeah. We've gone out of phase audio-wise again, Heron, which is kind of frustrating.
1:19:21 HS: Yeah. Now you're back.
1:19:22 TB: I'm not sure. There must be some network dependency, but I'm completely wired here, and you're completely wired there. So maybe Skype is just completely...
1:19:32 HS: Well, it's beginning to be not such a surprise. [chuckle] Skype has been acting quite badly I would say in the last month or so, at least that's been my... Has that...
1:19:44 TB: Yes, you dropped off again. You just completely dropped. But yes, that's been my experience.
1:19:48 HS: Not been your experience?
1:19:49 TB: That's been my experience as you drop off through. [chuckle] This is getting so frustrating for my evening here. And I think we might call it a night.
1:19:57 HS: Yeah, this is...
1:19:58 TB: Try to edit it together. So when you come back, we can round this thing off. But you don't seem to be coming back.
1:20:04 HS: Hello?
1:20:05 TB: Yeah, now I can hear you again. And maybe you can hear me. Maybe.
1:20:09 HS: Uh oh.
1:20:10 TB: Can you hear me?
1:20:11 HS: You can hear me again. Hallelujah, brother. Hello. Yes, I can hear you. Yes, I can hear you.
1:20:17 TB: Let's wrap this thing up before we get too frustrated about this whole thing.
1:20:21 HS: I never...
1:20:22 TB: Okay, Heron, you're breaking up, and the whole thing has become completely incoherent.
1:20:26 HS: I got it. You still can't hear me.
1:20:29 TB: Now I can hear you. But this is probably...
1:20:31 HS: I'm gonna hang up, and I'm gonna call you. And I'm...
1:20:33 TB: Okay.
1:20:33 HS: Of course, now it's just perfect, right?
1:20:35 TB: Yeah. Well, now I can hear you. You call me back, and we'll round this thing up. In any case, Heron, I think we probably should call it a night because this thing is giving me a bit of a headache, and I've got to edit all this stuff. And I'll try to get it out for people tomorrow.
1:20:48 HS: Sure of it?
1:20:48 TB: I'll talk to you... Yeah, now your audio is completely useless, but I'll talk to you soon, Heron.