Another dumb question then... Where does Vlisp fit into the equation?
You shouldn't worry about distinguishing between AutoLISP and Visual LISP and all that. See it as a normal progress of any old software. AutoLISP started out almost 20 years ago as a small subset of a programming language and it has just expanded in a natural way to keep up with the development of AutoCAD.
When people refer to "plain AutoLISP" it merely means the stage of the software between release 2.6 up until release 14 or 2000. Because that stage still represents the basic core of the language, it's probably the first thing you'll learn (it's like learning C++ by learning how to add two numbers and print the result before getting to know how to dereference a pointer).
What has since been added to the product that is now called Visual LISP can be compared to adding an expansion library to any programming language. It's
still the same language - and you'll still use the core functions over and over - but it just got some additional features that either expands the range of operability or adds some alternative ways to tackle a problem. Don't worry about it .. it'll come slowly but surely once you pick up the basics.