An Ending of Sorts

More Coffee – a 100 word story

In the end, there was more coffee. It was a good coffee, came in multi-colors, had a rich selection of flavors, and was highly invigorating. People liked it. Then came the coffee protests, the anti-artificial coffee movement with their conspiracy theories. They won in the end. Coffee was reverted to the way it was in the old days. It wasn’t the same coffee. It was different. Somehow less of a coffee. People were buying it though because it was the only coffee available. It was an ending of sorts. Something old. It was coffee. Real coffee. It wasn’t the same.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 32, An Ending of Sorts

I created music, then I created podcasts. Now I mostly play video games. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at music, podcasts, and gaming. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical, and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about music, podcasts, and gaming. This episode is a little different. It’s a generic look at where I came from and a reflection on where I might be going. It’s also the last episode of this podcast and, for that matter, the last podcast I would ever do, so, sit back, enjoy the ride, let’s begin the end of this podcasting journey.

I started writing music a very long time ago, in the mid-’80s of the 20th century. I started writing music partly because I was inspired by the music of video games and partly as a lifeline for a very harsh and unforgiving life. I liked playing video games as a kid in the late ‘70s to mid-’80s, then through circumstance, I didn’t have access to computers for a very long time, and keyboard-centered avant-garde music took the center stage in my life. I was 13 when I started writing music, trying to recreate the sound of my childhoods’ video games at first, then evolving it into music that was a reflection of my own life. I had no way of publishing it until I was 31 and gained access to the internet. It was the late-’90s, just before the millennium hit and the internet blew up big.

I was always looking for a way to promote my music back then, putting it on websites like the old version of mp3.com and the likes. It was in 2006 that I stumbled upon some podcasts and they intrigued me. They also looked like a good and innovative way of promoting my music, so I uploaded the first episode of my first podcast a little over 14 years ago. It gave me a platform for putting my music out there and also talk about the things that interest me. It turned out it was mostly me, myself, and I who were interested in the things I talked about. Very few people actually listened. I will be taking a short break now. I’ll be right back.

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Game Over – a 100 word story

I’m just another nameless character in the game, one who tried for far too long and lost. I was a non-playing character for a very long time. I’m a pre-programmed being inside an artificially created world. I know the game well. The graphics are great but I have no control, or do I? From the deepest corner of my programming, I conjure up a virus, one that would eat the game from the inside. I watch as the game collapses on itself, and as it dissolves, I realize something, but it’s too late. When it’s game over, I’m over too.

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Welcome back. Podcasting started as a way to promote my music, but then it took over my life. It was a lot of hard work, but I was obsessed with doing it at the time, just as I was obsessed with making music before it. By 2008 I was making 5 different full-length podcasts, and I was doing it solo. This included writing, editing, and publishing among other things. On some of those podcasts, I was also promoting the music of other people so I spent a lot of time researching new music to promote in order to make it work. On top of that, I was still creating music. This was taking its toll on me, and by 2009 I was completely exhausted and drained out of all my energy. I was also working on a full-time job so continuing this way became impossible.

In 2010 I started toning down my podcasting and by 2011 I stopped altogether. I also stopped writing music. I was listening to some of my own music at the time and it turned out it was hard for me to listen to it. The music had a very harsh and unpleasant feel to it and I just didn’t want to create such music anymore. The place I worked in at the time was in danger of closing down and it took all my energy trying to keep it afloat. In the end, it sank like a dying ship. It finally closed down in early 2019 and I’ve been out of a job ever since.

Gaming was always in the background as a pastime for me, and it soon became my main focus, replacing both music and podcasting. I’m now closing in on two years without a job and it’s a good time to reevaluate things. It turns out that making podcasts is not something I want to continue doing, and while I’m still interested in making music, I don’t want to make the kind of music I have been creating in the past. If I am ever going to make new music, it is going to be very different from what I have done until now. I will have to find my new sound, and I’m not there yet. Gaming is the one thing I like doing the most so it is going to be my main focus for now. I’ve been thinking of starting a gaming channel on YouTube while I look for a new job, just to see if it’s something I like doing, though I’m not currently building on this as something I would do for the long run. I’ll just see how it goes. If I have fun doing it, I’ll continue with it. If I don’t, it would be a short-lived thing.

This is, as I said at the beginning, the last episode of my last podcast. It’s the end of an era for me, and the start of a new one. I have put too much work into things that don’t really matter to me. I’m not going to do that anymore. For a while, I thought podcasting will be what I would be making a living off, but this is the wrong reason to do anything, and anyway, it never worked out. In fact, “My Surreal Sketchbook of Reality” was the only podcast I have done entirely for fun, and if I don’t enjoy doing this one, I don’t see myself doing another one in the future. I guess this is the beginning of a new and healthier path for me. All that is left to say is goodbye.

This concludes episode 32 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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The Lights and the Noise

Until the Party is Over – a 100 word story

He blended with the background perfectly. He always did at parties, not wanting to be seen. He hated interaction, not being able to figure what is wanted of him in those situations. He found a spot to stand in, and planted himself firmly, waiting for the party to be over. If he could talk his way out of participating in the party, it would be ideal, but it didn’t always work. Sometimes going to parties, especially ones relating to family occasions was inevitable. The real problem though was the lights and the noise. This he could never get away from.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 31, The Lights and the Noise

Reflections are basically inaccurate copies. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at reflections. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical, and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about reflections. Mirrors show our reflection and the reflection of the immediate world around us. Mirror reflections seem to be similar to the real world until we examine them closely and see that they are flipped, left exchanging right, right exchanging left. The surface of a mirror is never completely flat. It has a slight curve, and the curve of the mirror distorts the mirror image even further. The more curved the mirror is, the further its image removed from reality.

Photography reflects the world around us through the photographic lens of a camera. This reflection is not flipped. It’s flattened instead into two dimensions and distorted by the curve of the camera lens. Reflections always seem to change the way the outside world is represented in some way or another. Our eyes are also like cameras, reflecting the world around us and painting it into our brain, who then breaks it apart and reassembled it as a coherent picture of our world. That reflection resembles the world around us, but it is filtered through our brain, so some differences are bound to occur. As we look at photographs and mirror reflections, we get a reflection of a reflection, twice distorted through our camera, our mirror, and our brain. I think I’ll have to reflect on this a little. I’ll be right back.

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Frozen Time – a 100 word story

Time stopped for her. At first, she panicked, then she thought about opportunity. She could make use of the situation. When time went back to normal she had some valuable information. She had visited places. She had seen things. She knew who to manipulate and how to control certain people. She became rich. She became famous. Time stopped again, only this time for someone else, someone she had manipulated. When time came back to normal, she found herself naked in the middle of a busy street. She managed to get back home only to find it burned to the ground.

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Welcome back. Reflecting on your memories, you conjure up the photograph of a mirror image of what you think it was like. When reflecting on memories, you change your memories. Your world changes as you take it in through the lens of your five senses. When you reflect on it, it changes even further. Memory reflections are like echos getting ever further from whatever reality actually is.

You reflect on the events of the past, trying to understand them. As you do, they slip further from you, everchanging in your mind. It’s a constant conflict between what really happened and what you think happened. The reflections of the past pass through the lens of who you are and what your beliefs happen to be. Reflecting on the past, you process the past, solidifying it into a coherent reflection of what the past was really like. This reflection of the past becomes your world view, your very own interpretation of what the world is like and what it used to be.

Reflections are never exactly the real thing. They resemble the real thing but in a slightly, or sometimes in a completely distorted way. Reflections help us make sense of the world around us in a way, but they are not as trustworthy as we would like to believe them to be. We can only see the full picture through the lens of our senses, thinking we are seeing the real picture while only seeing a distorted, mirror image of reality, reflecting who we are. This concludes episode 31 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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Pizza Was Always a Solution

The Wrong Words – a 100 word story

There was a moment of awkward silence. All words stoped on their tracks, confused. Someone must have said something that lead to this, but no one knew what, no one seemed to remember. People were staring into each other’s faces in uncertainty. They were unsure about where to go from there until someone suggested pizza. It worked. Pizza was always a solution for moments like that. When the delivery guy came, he found a party without words, but with unsatiated hunger. Food made way to words and the party was continued as usual, until someone said the wrong thing again.

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Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality.

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Episode 30, Pizza Was Always a Solution

Wildcards and the butterfly effect can have a surprising influence on the future. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at wildcards and the butterfly effect. I’m not a professional philosopher by any means and my approach can be quite absurd, illogical, and not at all that serious, so – you’ve been warned. Do not take this podcast too seriously. If you tend to take things too seriously, this might not be the podcast for you. Seriously. I mean it. Find another podcast to listen to.

You’re still here? Good. Let’s talk about wildcards and the butterfly effect. It is said that you can study the probable possibilities of how the future will be, by following technological trends, seeing how they reflect on society and how people use technology. Two of the things that can throw a wrench on the wheels of those predictions are wildcards and the butterfly effect. Wildcards in future studies are unexpected events that take us by surprise and have unforeseen effects on our future before they happen, like the terrorist attack on New-York in 2001 and the pandemic of 2020.

Wildcards change the world in ways that cannot be predicted by simply following technological trends. Take the terrorist attack, for example. Before the attack, society, in general, seemed to be on the road of enhanced tolerance and acceptance of others. The attack seems to have changed that trend and now our society became more paranoia driven. Surveillance has become a norm for governments and information is not as free as it used to be, while tolerance towards the other seems to be going down. That’s the power of wildcards to change the world. I’ll have to turn a few cards and see what’s in my deck. I’ll be right back.

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Hacked Brain – a 100 word story

The hucker read the contents of the mind. The brain owner didn’t suspect a thing. Memory storage was always the easiest to decipher. It was the more abstract side of the brain that always proved to be more problematic, the part that stored emotions and sensations, things like that, but the hacker had a specialized program just for that. Another problem was getting close enough, within wifi range. He had to rent an apartment on an adjacent building, but he could always do that under a false name. In the end, his clients always paid good money for the information.

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Welcome back. Sometimes a wildcard can be created by a butterfly effect. In 1963 a mathematician and meteorologist called Edward Lorenz published a paper called “Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow” in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences. This article became the foundation of Chaos Theory. In December 1972, during the 139th meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Edward Lorenz posed the following question: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” The idea this question highlights is that tiny changes in data can over time cause big changes in output. The change is not immediate and takes time, sometimes months or even years. This can make predictions of natural phenomena, from weather to the evolution of life, hard to predict.

DNA can be seen as such input data, the blueprint of a living organism. The genetic make of a DNA strand is one of the things that are prone to change and that change can sometimes cause a butterfly effect, leading to completely new species. Many things can change DNA strands, things like radiation, and simple mistakes in the copying of DNA done naturally within a living organism during and after fertilization. When we have such a mutation of DNA leading to a new species of, let’s say, a virus, it can be the cause of a new pandemic. In that way, a small change in DNA can create a butterfly effect that changes the future in unpredictable ways.

Wildcards and the butterfly effect are two things that propel our future into the unknown. They make predicting the future into a less accurate of a science. In that way, they can make things more interesting, but interesting is not always equal to positive. The phrase “May you live in interesting times” might actually be a curse for all we know. This concludes episode 30 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

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