# is Stephan King lazy, altzheimery or just fucking with us?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 11, 2012, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547 "2012-02-11T20:27:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/41 "2012-02-14T01:09:57Z")
Continuing this slight hijack, I could never watch “That 70’s show” with pleasure. I grew up in the mid to late 70s, and there was so many anachronisms in that show it made me cringe. Generally a lot of stuff was really from the early 80s.
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/42 "2012-02-14T01:11:44Z")
> [@GargoyleWB](#):
>
> It must be closer, Mrs Todd can still drive it in under two hours.
Actually, I was wrong - according to Google Maps, the distance is 333 miles.
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### Author:  [@Quasimodem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quasimodem)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/43 "2012-02-14T01:49:51Z")
“Alzheimery”: Can I use that? 🙂
Also, I’m embarrassed to admit that all the mistakes in that novel escaped me. Yup, nary a “huh?” passed my lips. ☹
I think Mr. King would be well-advised to forward his next manuscript to some of _you_ guys and ladies, and I mean that as a sincere compliment.
That said, the story itself hangs together well, I thought, and he did admit to having his son, Joe Hill help with the ending, which, as someone upthread mentioned, sounds like he may have “written himself into a corner”. (I love that phrase, by the way).
And yeah. I hate to admit it, but he wrote better stuff when he was drinking.
Also did I understand correctly that police cars in Maine had _only_ blue lights and never red?
Thanks
Quasi
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### Author:  [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/44 "2012-02-14T08:37:12Z")
I’ve never understood Tommyknockers as metaphor for addiction. However Pet Sematary is a metaphor for the relaspe cycle of addiction…the zombies are the addiction coming back and getting bigger and worse every time.
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### Author:  [@Fir\_na\_tine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fir_na_tine)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/45 "2012-02-14T09:21:50Z")
> [@Quasimodem](#):
>
> “Alzheimery”: Can I use that? 🙂
>
> Also did I understand correctly that police cars in Maine had _only_ blue lights and never red?
>
> Thanks
>
> Quasi
Ayuh, blue and only blue.
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### Author:  [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/46 "2012-02-14T15:13:16Z")
> [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](#):
>
> I’ve never understood Tommyknockers as metaphor for addiction. However Pet Sematary is a metaphor for the relaspe cycle of addiction…the zombies are the addiction coming back and getting bigger and worse every time.
Well, it’s not really a metaphor as it is subtext. And it’s not really subtext as it is text. And it’s not really text as it is IN YOUR FACE, SCREAMING. 😉
The first third of the novel dealt with two characters, one (Robby Anderson) losing herself in her new addiction to the saucer, the other (Garth) ‘coming out the other side’ after a near life-destroying (and career-destroying) bender, the culmination of years of alcoholism.
“Shot your wife, eh? Pretty cool.”
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### Author:  [@Kimballkid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimballkid)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/47 "2012-02-14T16:56:50Z")
> [@elfkin477](#):
>
> Wait, what? There are places where police cars have blue and red lights for real? I’ve only seen red lights on cruisers on toys and in TV shows. I figured it was sort of like all phone numbers starting with 555 in media, not based on real life.
Another example of cop cars with both:
[South Dakota Highway Patrol](http://policecarwebsite.net/fc/statepdcars/sd163.jpg)
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### Author:  [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/48 "2012-02-14T17:11:45Z")
Growing up in the 80’s, red and blue lights were common with LAPD cars. I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) that this was the practice after the Caryl Chessman case. That was the late 40’s so were blue light’s not common practice in the timeframe of the book?
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/49 "2012-02-14T19:14:35Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#):
>
> If Google Ngram is correct, “get a life” became popular in the late 1980’s:
>
> [Google Ngram Viewer: get a life](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=get+a+life&year_start=1800&year_end=2012&corpus=0&smoothing=3)
>
> Almost certainly, the thing that really caused the phrase to take off was William Shatner’s use of the phrase on the December 20, 1986 broadcast of _Saturday Night Live_. My memory is that I knew the term when Shatner said it during the original broadcast. This would seem to imply that it’s somewhat older than that.
My memory is that the term was already so common that it was already a cliche by the time Shatner used it on SNL. I don’t think that sketch cause it to take off at all. In fact, I would suspect that it was already losing its momentum by then.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/50 "2012-02-14T20:32:53Z")
I think you’re confusing the commonness of “get a life” among your hip friends and the later popularity of it among the general public. Take a look at the Google Ngram that I linked to. It clearly takes off in the late 1980’s. There are hardly any written uses of it before then. You and your hip friends may have considered it a boring cliche by the time of the Shatner sketch, but that doesn’t mean that most people had even heard of it by then.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/51 "2012-02-14T20:40:59Z")
1. Neither I nor my friends were hip in the 1980s.
2. Written references always trail cultural use, often by years, so while the statistics are interesting, they don’t establish a definitive historical usage pattern outside of written references.
3. Correlation is not causation. Even if the Ngram is taken at face value, that doesn’t establish that the Shatner use was the one that sent the phrase into orbit.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/52 "2012-02-14T21:01:14Z")
Written uses don’t trail spoken ones by that much, actually. These days so much is written down, even things that seem to be strictly casual spoken-only usage, that it’s generally not that much later that they’re seen in print. Yes, this isn’t any proof that the Shatner sketch was what brought it into general popularity, but it does look rather suspicious. What do you mean you and your friends weren’t hip? I clearly remember that TV show that you guys did back in the early 1980’s where you and your friends would sit around showing off your hip clothes, talking about the currently hip music, and using incomprehensible (to me) hip expressions. Don’t you remember that cover of _Time_ (or maybe it was _Newsweek_) that said, “WHY AREN’T YOU AS HIP AS ACSENRAY?”? Man, we all wanted to be like you back then.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/53 "2012-02-14T22:39:00Z")
Okay, that made me laugh.
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### Author:  [@Cugel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cugel)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2012, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/54 "2012-02-15T03:49:08Z")
> [@singular1](#):
>
> - the book is full of these, and it always pulls me right out of the story.
Also, there aren’t 22 months in a year, not even 1963
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### Author:  [@EKDS5k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EKDS5k)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2012, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/55 "2012-02-15T07:50:10Z")
> [@Cugel](#):
>
> Also, there aren’t 22 months in a year, not even 1963
Yes, different places have different conventions for writing the date. You’re very clever.
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### Author:  [@EKDS5k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EKDS5k)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2012, 7:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/56 "2012-02-15T07:56:37Z")
And I missed the edit window but wanted to actually contribute. I think the Dark Tower series is a good timeline for his writing falling apart. This is your spoiler warning. He goes from building up this detailed world with well-developed characters, and showing how they all tied together, to just weird, to author self-insertion (and he saves all of reality), to blatant copying of other works, to handing out deus ex machina like candy, and then OH WAIT DO OVER!
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### Author:  [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)
#### Post date: [February 15, 2012, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/57 "2012-02-15T13:55:18Z")
> [@EKDS5k](#):
>
> And I missed the edit window but wanted to actually contribute. I think the Dark Tower series is a good timeline for his writing falling apart. This is your spoiler warning. He goes from building up this detailed world with well-developed characters, and showing how they all tied together, to just weird, to author self-insertion (and he saves all of reality), to blatant copying of other works, to handing out deus ex machina like candy, and then OH WAIT DO OVER!
As big of a fan of King as they come, and especially the Dark Tower series, I couldn’t agree more; although I blame it on his accident. It shook him to his core.
I did absolutely love the ending, however. It was perfectly fitting, couldn’t have ended any other way, IMHO.
I will say, I find his writing of the past couple years to be his best stuff he’s written since the late 80s. I really enjoyed Full Dark, No Stars, Under the Dome, and 11/22/63 (although I’m still in the middle of it).
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### Author:  [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2012, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/58 "2012-03-17T15:33:23Z")
> [@JohnT](#):
>
> You live in the Pacific NW so you might not notice that the city of [Killeen](http://www.killeentexas.gov/), Texas is consistently (as in, every time) misspelled as Kileen. There’s also the fact that he has his main character smelling the oil refineries in Midland, TX while in the DFW area, notwithstanding the fact that Midland is over 250 miles away from Dallas. :rolleyes:
It’s amazing how many of these errors occur in short succession, but then maybe it’s what I’m familiar with: the phrase “Don’t Mess with Texas” was NOT around in the 70s or late 60s as a slogan or catch-phrase, and I’m going to guess also not around in 1960. I do recall it suddenly becoming a clever PSA slogan in the mid 1980s, and delighting all of us with its cleverness (as an anti-litter campaign).
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### Author:  [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2012, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/59 "2012-03-17T16:36:00Z")
I could be wrong but I think “don’t mess with Texas” is as old as Texas itself. Heck, ISTR it was on one the state flags at one time.
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [March 17, 2012, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/60 "2012-03-17T16:49:19Z")
When I put the phrase “mess with Texas” into Google Ngram, this is what I get:
> **[Google Books Ngram Viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=mess%2Bwith%2BTexas&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3)**
>
> Google Books Ngram Viewer
It appears that the phrase comes out of nowhere in the mid-1980’s. Incidentally, for some reason, Google Ngram wouldn’t accept the phrase “don’t mess with Texas.” I’m not sure why. Does it not like contractions?
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