My Surreal Sketchbook of Reality

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

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

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

Transcript —– Shapeshifter – a 100 word story As if being both a wolf and a woman wasn’t enough, now she was also a cat, a bear, and an occasional Moonkin. Those strange silent teachers were kind to her even if they were a little eccentric, talking to trees and all that. The problem was that now they were trying to teach her how to actually be a tree and she wasn’t sure she liked it, but then again, she was willing to go through the ordeal if only to keep the wolf in her at bay, to prove to herself that she was bitten, but not stirred. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 29, Strange Silent Teachers There are two types of time, objective and subjective. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at objective time and subjective time. 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 objective time and subjective time. We use a method for measuring time incorporating mechanical devices that separate it into hours, minutes, and seconds. Since mechanical devices are objective, you can say that this method of measuring time can function whether we are there or not, so the time they measure can also be considered objective and separate from us, functioning on its own. Objective time actually flows at a measured pace whether we measure it or not, one measured unit of time is the same length as the next one. Objective time is constant, unchanging. You can set up an event using objective time and know that it would happen when it is supposed to happen. In that way, objective time is very useful. You can theoretically change the future using objective time by setting up events that happen at certain times, as long as those events don’t clash with events set up by other people. Objective time is a constant while we are stranded here on earth, but that might change if we ever decide to leave our planet. That is because objective time is affected by gravity and speed. Time is slowed by gravity so it flows faster in space where there is less gravity. While the effect is almost negligible, it does exist and as time accumulates, the discrepancy between earth time and time in space grows. Time also slows down as we speed our way through the universe, stopping altogether when we reach the speed of light. Oh dear, time seems to have stopped. I better find out why. I’ll be right back. —– The Hunger – a 100 word story There’s an empty, vacant look in his eyes as he drifts through as if caught by an unseen wind, more dead than alive, more automaton then human. They take him with them to the battlefield, let the hunger strike him. He barely knows his friend from his foe when the hunger strikes, but somehow he does. He recognizes the enemy and his sword goes down, cutting down enemy after enemy until his hunger is satiated, then the vacant look in his eyes returns and he just stands there, staring into empty space until his need, his hunger wakes him again. —– Welcome back. Subjective time is not about time itself, but about the way you experience time. It flows in a way that is influenced by what you do. It flows slower when you are not enjoying what you are currently doing and faster when you do something you like doing. In a way, you can control subjective time by controlling your experience, as opposed to objective time that cannot be controlled. Controlling your experience is done by shifting your perception of that experience. Let’s say you have something of a chore to do, doing the dishes for example, or cleaning the house. You can change your experience by turning what you do into a game, washing the dishes by shape and color for example, or cleaning your house while roleplaying a magician, every clean room magically transformed by your action. You can add music to your environment to make your tasks more enjoyable. Each one of those actions would make subjective time flow faster. While subjective time might have nothing to do with real, or objective time, it’s the way we experience time in our everyday life. We don’t experience time as a measured unit with an unchanging pace. We experience time as changing in pace, sometimes going faster and sometimes slower. That’s why we have a need for measuring time. Without the measurement of time, we won’t have any control over the events around us since we have no real objective grasp of time flow, only a subjective one. This concludes episode 29 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The Breadandbutterfly – a 100 word story The Breadandbutterfly is a rare species indeed. It only comes out at certain times a day, the shy little creature. The lighting has to be just right and the air has to be at just about the right temperature. The Breadandbutterfly would only eat the very rare Goldenmonkey Fruit and it would only eat it if it’s just about ripe enough. If you are on the hunt for The Breadandbutterfly, you’ll have to observe all of those conditions precisely, wear the right camouflage, carry the right scented perfume, but most of all, you’ll have to go through the looking glass. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 28, The Right Scented Perfume It appears we have five senses, seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting, all there to help us experience the world around us. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at senses. 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 senses. Sight is the most obvious window to the world around us. We generally see in colors and shapes. Our brain get those as images through the windows of our two eyes. Our brain doesn’t handle those images as a whole though. Instead, it breaks those images apart, storing different parts in different places, then reassembling them for us, interpreting them as a whole. In that way, the image we finally get is not the real image of the world around us but merely our own interpretation of that image. Sound is the result of the movement of air. Air moves in waves, not unlike the waves of the ocean. Those waves have singular shapes and speeds. The speed of the movement of air is also known as frequency. Faster moving air has a higher frequency and sounds higher pitched, while slower moving air would have a lower frequency and pitch. The shape of the wave would shape the timbre of a sound. A soundwave with a completely random shape would create white noise while a smoother shaped soundwave would create a smoother, more coherent sound. A triangular soundwave would create a sharper sound timbre. A combination of those waves and shapes create all the sounds we hear in our world. The sounds we intake through our ears are merely the interpretation of our brain for the movement of air around us. I think I’m going to listen to air move around me for a while. I’ll be right back. —– Sky Frog – a 100 word story A frog dropped from the sky. Not a rain of frogs. Just a single frog. Not something to make conspiracy theories about. It did surprise the frog though. It didn’t expect to drop out of the sky. It was just sitting on a cloud, then it was plummeting towards the earth at top speed. It tried to comprehend what was happening, but it was only a frog. The end was inevitable. Frogs are very soft while the ground tends to be quite hard. As the elephant watched in horror from the cloud, it couldn’t help thinking “I could be next.” —– Welcome back. While sight and sound are about experiencing the world around you from a distance, touch is about proximity, it’s about being close, about being intimate with the world around you. Touch is the feeling of something touching your very own coating, your skin. The feeling of touch is caused by something moving the atoms on your skin, so touch is actually a sense of movement, the movement of your very own body, caused by some external, and sometimes even internal force. Touch is the sense that casts down the barrier between you and the world around you which is why it is considered the most intimate of senses. Smell and taste are connected, almost dependent on each other. While touch is about connecting with the world around you, smell and taste are about taking the world in. Smell is there to sample the world around you from a safe distance, inhaling aromas and letting your brain decode them as smells, while taste is there to appreciate the part of the world that goes into your body in order to sustain it, and it is not complete without a sense of smell to complement it. Your five senses are there to help you appreciate the world around you. Some people would tell you of a sixth sense, a mystical sense that goes beyond the five senses, beyond the world we know. They misunderstand the role our senses have. Our senses are there to help us understand the world around us, not to invent new worlds. That is the role of imagination, and that is where the sixth sense resides. This concludes episode 28 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Under the Bed – a 100 word story There was never any doubt. Conviction, it’s a strange thing. You end up confusing what is real, with what you believe to be real. That’s why I am convinced the little green creature under my bed is real, you see. I know you don’t believe me. No one else does. It’s fine. You don’t have to believe me. See for yourself. Just, don’t say I didn’t warn you when they find you tomorrow, mutilated, deformed, and half dead. I have to feed it you know. If I don’t, it would turn on me. We can’t let that happen, can we? —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 27, Little Green Creature There are two main classes of opposites, one that is position-based and another that is based on essence and definition. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at opposites. 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 opposites. Position. A line connects two dots. Those dots are on opposite sides of the line. They are opposites because of their position on opposite sides of a line. Let’s say we take the line, curve it, bend it until the two dots connect and the line is closed into a shape. Those are the same two dots, but they are not opposites anymore. The condition of the dots and the line changes, negating the oppositeness of the dots. This example shows us that positional opposites don’t always stay opposites. Let’s say we are sitting on opposite sides of a very long table. Our position is opposite each other. Now, let’s say that the table is slowly growing in size. Since the earth is round, our table slowly curves until one end reaches so close to the other that we end up sitting back to back. We changed our position so we are no longer facing each other. We are no longer opposite. Position based opposites are fragile and can break as the position of opposite components changes. For example, I can get up and leave the room where the table is, then I won’t be opposite you anymore. I’ll be somewhere else. Let me just check for a minute if I’m here or there. I’ll be right back. —– Orthodocile – a 100 word story There was a sound, unlike thunder but resembling it. Something was approaching very fast. Something big. I knew it was a dead-end. I couldn’t turn back. In the minimal lights, I could barely make up the walls, tunnels, and watery floor. I concentrated. Being a being of light, I glowed, painting the tunnel in green and yellow. There it was, a huge Orthodocile, all teeth, horns, and thick hides. I quickly integrated myself into the water, leaving substance behind, becoming pure light. The Orthodocile passed me, reached a dead end, and turned back. Predator problem averted, at least for now. —– Welcome back. When we get to opposites that are based on essence and definition, every opposite might hold the seed of it’s opposite and nothing is exactly what it seems. Take black and white for example. They are considered the absolute opposites in color theory, but if you examine them closely, you’ll find that there is no absolute white, and there is no absolute black. You can always find a lighter white or a darker black. In truth, all whites and blacks are different shades of gray, and gray is a mixture of black and white. In that way, white holds the seed of black inside it and black holds the seed of white. Finding the opposite of something depends on how you define it and how you perceive its essence. It also depends on what “an opposite” really means to you. While definition is determined by the solid qualities of something such as shape and color, essence can sometimes be much more amorphic in nature, more subjective, and open to interpretations. This is especially true in abstract opposites, such as good and evil or determinism and randomness. The essence of abstracts often depends on your point of view and when the point of view of someone else is the complete opposite of your own, you might and up with opposites that are the same but only differ in subjectiveness. Let’s look at the example of good and evil as opposites. When the essence of good from your point of view is the same as the essence of evil from an opposing point of view, opposites collide and this could lead to chaos. That is the problem with opposites. They are an illusion. They don’t really exist, like the white that isn’t exactly white, or the black that isn’t exactly black, there are no absolute opposites. You have to look at every case of opposites and determine how far opposed they are while keeping in mind that it is that way from your very own, unique point of view. You might end up finding those opposites sitting on a table opposite each other, drinking tea. This concludes episode 27 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The Protector – a 100 word story The last of the Porcupine Caribou waded through the snow. The hunter pushed on, already thinking about the money this stuffed animal would bring him. He could see it in the distance, a brownish white spot on the spot white snow. He just had to get closer, within shooting range. He moved stealthily and quietly until he could almost smell the prey. Suddenly, the reindeer looked up, his eyes intelligent and sad. A shot was heard and the hunter fell dead on the snow. The protector smiled, walked to his beloved pet and gave it a rubbing behind the ear. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 26, Intelligent and Sad Every once in a while, a feeling of melancholy might fall upon you. This feeling is also known as sadness. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at sadness. 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 sadness. Sadness seems to have two main causes. The first one is loss. The other is a discrepancy between you and the world around you that may lead to loneliness and alienation. There might be other reasons for sadness but those seem to be the two main ones. Loss is the absence of someone, an absence that leaves a hole where that special someone used to be. Someone was there and he or she is not there anymore. That someone might be a lover who walked out on you or a child who left home. They might leave you with the hope that they might return or they might be gone for good. In a way, that someone is still there, only not with you anymore. For this reason, such a loss might sometimes be more difficult to accept. There is another kind of loss, one that is interwoven with the tapestry of the dippest kind of sadness. That loss is the result of the death of a loved one. That kind of loss leaves a hole that can never be filled. That kind of hole is within you for the rest of your life, always there, lurking in the shadows. It is the kind of sadness that is interwoven into your very being. You can learn to live with it, but it never completely disappears. No matter what you do, there will be loss in your life. It’s inevitable. People die or move on, leaving a person-shaped hole where they used to be in your life. I’m going to try and fix this hole here. I’ll be right back. —– Hide – a 100 word story I want to hide from it. I don’t want to be part of it anymore. I want people to forget my name, forget I ever existed, then, maybe I’ll be free. All the things that have gone wrong, all my mistakes would disappear. So… can you do it? Good. Your plane of existence sounds good to me. So… you say it’s completely empty? Excellent. Now – about the cost. As I understand it, I renounce my connection to reality and sign it up to you. That’s fine with me. I never had much use for it anyway. Where do I sign? —– Welcome back. There is another kind of sadness, one that comes from not being in sync with the people around you. The sadness of the one who is different from the ones around him. The sadness that comes from the loneliness of being a unique human being, from being the unknown in the eyes of those around you. Most people are afraid of the unknown. It’s a fear that comes from ancient times when the unknown could be someone from an opposing tribe, someone that could kill you. If you are different, you are the unknown and people tend to stay away. It’s not a rational fear and it comes from ignorance. It has no place in modern times but it’s our heritage from that ancient past. In truth, we are all different. We are all unique but sometimes it is difficult for the average person to understand this. Being perceived as different by those around you is really just a product of being in the wrong place. People are still tribal in nature and they like gathering with their own tribe. If you are in the wrong tribe you are perceived as different. It is quite easy to find a tribe that fits you today if you are stuck in the wrong place. This is one of the things the social part of the internet is used for. While finding your tribe in social media might be easier today then it used to be, there is still a problem. The people of your tribe might be scattered throughout the far-out corners of the world and reaching them might not be easy. An internet-based tribe is no substitute for human touch, human contact. When your tribe is scattered around the world, that contact is missing and in its place, there is sadness. It’s a sadness that cannot always be resolved. You just have to learn to live with your sadness, embrace it as your very own unique brand of sadness. Give your sadness a name, joke with it, have a drink with it, make it your friend. This concludes episode 26 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Smoke Rings – a 100 word story A man, or a mere impression of one. He rises from the chimney of some factory or another, taking shape from the smoke. He hovers above the city, carried by the wind, the result of a secret project. Eyes are cameras, ears are receivers, recording silently. No door can hold him. Built from the latest in nanotechnology, he just blows underneath like smoke. His brain has the computing power of a supercomputer. The results are being sent for processing at a secret facility. He is just the prototype. More are being created. Watch out from the fog, it’s coming alive. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 25, Eyes are Cameras We know what a chicken is, or – do we? This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at the idea of chicken. 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 chicken. What makes a chicken what it is? Is it the shape of the chicken? Is it what it sounds like? The way it walks? The way it talks? You might begin by saying a chicken is a flightless bird, that is a bird that can’t fly. There are other flightless birds so that wouldn’t be what defines a chicken but merely one of the chicken’s characteristics or traits. Could you say a chicken is a collection of traits that make up a chicken? Do we need all of those traits to coexist in order for a chicken to be a chicken or is there one unique trait that makes a chicken a chicken. What is that one elusive trait that is uniquely chicken? When we dig deeper into a chicken, we find a strand of DNA just sitting there, waiting to be found. DNA is the blueprint of any living organism or creature, a recipe for the makeup of that creature and the most unique trait of that creature. The chicken has her own unique DNA like every other living being and the sequence of that DNA can be sequenced and then mapped. No other creature has that same unique DNA map, so you can say that the unique DNA sequence that resides inside a chicken is what defines the making of a chicken. All this talk about the making of a chicken made me hungry. I think I’ll make a chicken for lunch today. I’ll be right back. —– The Science of Beauty – a 100 word story They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so some scientists started dissecting eyes, searching for the exact place where beauty resides. First, they dissected the eyes of mice, got them nowhere. They dissected the eyes of convicted criminals, dead ones at first, but then someone reasoned that having some real-time input from subjects could result in important data. It didn’t work either. Someone pointed out criminals didn’t really have a sense of beauty, so they tried using the eyes of artists, poets, and musicians. When they finished, they looked around them to find a world without beauty. —– Welcome back. So, we say that the chicken DNA is what defines our chicken. What if we cook the chicken? That chicken soup still has those DNA strands in it. Does this mean the soup is a chicken? If it doesn’t, when does the chicken stop being a chicken? Is it when the last strand of DNA dissolves? Is it when we eat the chicken and it becomes part of us? Maybe DNA is not all that makes up a chicken. Maybe it’s a collection of DNA and other traits. It would seem that being alive is one such trait, but then it also seems that a dead chicken is still a chicken. Let’s say someone builds a mechanical chicken. Is it still a chicken? We might say a mechanical chicken is not really a chicken, the same way that a drawing of a pipe isn’t really a pipe. What then if we take an actual chicken and start replacing all the parts that make up a chicken with mechanical parts until it becomes a mechanical chicken. When does the chicken stop being an actual chicken? What is that unique characteristic that stops a chicken from being a chicken? You might say if a chicken thinks it’s a chicken, then it’s a chicken. What then if a mouse thinks it’s a chicken? Is that mouse also a chicken? You might then say that a chicken is whatever you think is a chicken. This would make the definition of chicken the same as the idea of chicken you have in your mind. In that way, the chicken itself doesn’t really exist. It’s just the idea of chicken that exists in your mind. This concludes episode 25 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Elevator – a 100 word story The elevator went up on cables made out of carbon nanotubes, and it went all the way to the moon. There was the question of who gets to use it though. At first, it was was an elected committee that decided, but it turned out they displayed favoritism towards friends and family so it was dispensed in favor of a lottery. It was revealed that the lottery was falsified so a reality show was created instead. People held their breath and watched in wonder as the winners went up the elevator and then showed everyone what mooning was all about. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 24, All the Way to the Moon There are two kinds of qualities, one that is found in art, music, and literature and another which is found in crafts. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at quality in crafts. 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 quality. Crafting is the act of making something useful, that is something that can be used. Quality in crafting depends in part on the usability of the item that is being crafted. If a crafter makes a shoe, it wouldn’t be as useful if the shoe falls apart when you wear it so durability would be one aspect of quality in crafting. It would also have to sit comfortably on your feet. There is also a kind of subtlety in crafting that distinguishes a quality crafter from a common crafter. A crafter might increase the quality of a shoe by making it more pleasing to the eye, adding artistry to it. When it comes to crafts, it might seem that the human touch is what distinguishes a quality crafted item from a mere factory product. This distinction is fairly dismissable these days. It is becoming very easy to make a factory product that looks like it was made by human hands and a quality product can now be made by a machine. You can say that the quality of crafting today goes into the design of the shoe, the making of the computerized 3D model that serves as a blueprint for the product. People can plan the shoe in intricate details creating the perfect shoe in a computer program, then send it for mass production. The quality resides in the amount of detail that goes into the computerized shoe model, how well it fits your feet and how durable it is. I’ll just have to go and see if the shoe fits. I’ll be right back. —– Room 306 – a 100 word story We are pretty sure there’s a dimensional rift in room 306. Every once in a while one of our guests wanders in. The problem is it’s an exchange. What comes out looks like our guest, but we are pretty sure it’s a demon. We know it by the way he abuses hotel employees, being rude to the maids and abusive to the bell boys, so we use our demon cage to contain the abomination. Once he’s inside demanding a lawyer, we dispose of him in the river. In fact, we believe there might also be dimensional rifts in other rooms. —– Welcome back. Crafting will probably be taken out of human hands altogether in the coming years. Artificial intelligence is advancing to the point of understanding human needs and designing products that meet those needs. It would be possible to create quality products without any human intervention, and this also includes the actual design of those products. While quality in crafting was defined by the human touch for years, it is now obvious that this human touch won’t exist in future products anymore, or would at least be very rare. People would always want to craft things for their own enjoyment, but that would go into the hands of a few crafting enthusiasts, not people actually working the crafts for a living. Crafting would become a hobby for us humans. In the meantime, while machines take over most of the quality in crafting, the question we might ask is this, is there really actual quality in machine crafted products? For a machine to be a quality crafter, there would have to be applied the same principle conditions that apply to human crafted products. The shoe would have to hold without falling apart. The shoe would have to be comfortable. The shoe would have to be pleasing to the eye, maybe even to the point of being a piece of art. Artificial intelligence will be in charge of the automatic crafting process and it is now learning how to also become an artist. There are already examples of artworks created by machine-learning artificial intelligence programs. The distinction between human intelligence and an artificial one is becoming more and more blurred as we go into the future. Artificial intelligence itself might actually become one of the last quality crafted items. When the machines we craft become more intelligent than us, they might become the pinnacle of quality in crafting, the crafting of another living organism, made not of flesh and bones but of plastic and metal. The crafting of the ultimate quality crafter. This concludes episode 24 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Kirin – a 100 word story I stretched the line of my bow and shot a straight arrow using magical fire. The Rakuda fell down dead. I looted it. Got some Soft Fur and some coins. I looked for more Rakuda. Only six more to go. I spotted a few more of them, but then I saw it, the majestic Kirin, so rare and beautiful, his long neck towering high above me and his innocent eyes wise, timeless. I fitted my finest arrow and called up all my magic into it, air, water, and fire. It shot straight through, killing him on the spot. Epic drop. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 23, So Rare and Beautiful There are two kinds of qualities, one that is found in art, music, and literature and another which is found in crafts. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at quality in art, music, and literature. 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 quality. Art is first and foremost a form of expression that goes beyond the boundaries of simple words and gestures. For simplicity, I’m going to use the words art and artworks to include painting, music, literature and any other form of expression that can be called art. Quality in art is often reflected in complexity and layering. Quality art can be understood on several layers while holding a strong overall message, or it can hold a paradox, having several conflicting messages on different layers. Quality art can also make us think and feel and we can often be moved by it. The quality of art can be amorphic since it can’t really be measured. Art is an exchange between the creator of the artwork and the art consumer, thus making the art itself open to different interpretations. As a result, no artwork is the same for two different people. That makes the pursuit of understanding quality in art elusive. An artwork that is of quality to one person might be perceived as utter trash by another. This reminds me I should throw away this art reproduction I got, referred to by bystanders and observers alike as trash, to the trash. I’ll be right back. —– Yogerthy Yogurt – a 100 word story He follows her around like a dog, and Yogerthy Yogurt loved it until he started chasing cars, barking and digging holes in her backyard, hiding his favorite bones. She tried throwing a stick into a bottomless well but he climbed out and fetched. She tried driving him to remote locations and accidentally forgetting him there, but he kept returning. Even when she refused his marriage proposal, bone ring and all, he kept coming back wagging his tail. She eventually had to call the dog catchers for him. The guys from the asylum just didn’t have dog food on their menu. —– Welcome back. When we pursue quality in art, we use our own perspective as the focal point of our observation. That means we are biased participants as opposed to objective observers since art is an interaction between consumer, artwork, and artist. When you consume art, you interpret it in your own unique way. No two people are alike and any one person would interpret the artwork differently depending on their beliefs and personal biases. In that way, your own interpretation changes the artwork itself. Art, in a way, is what you interpret it to be. Art is first and foremost a statement by an artist who wants to convey a message to an art consumer. Art happens in the interaction between the two, and one facet of the quality of art can be seen as the amount of influence the artwork has on the consumer. The problem is that while one person might be completely moved by a certain piece of art, another might be completely indifferent to the same piece. In that way, quality in the arts has a quantum quality. It both exists and does not exist in the same artwork. That’s also the reason quality in the arts can’t be measured. Since quality in art seems to be subjective and can’t really be measured, it begs the question, does quality in the arts really exist? The answer is that some quality exists in any piece of art in existence because any artwork has its own consumers who interpret it in their own unique way. Since art is the interaction between the artwork and the consumer, it’s enough that one consumer finds quality in the art for it to have quality. In that way, the potential for quality exists in the art itself and manifests in the interaction between the artwork and the consumer. It’s the consumer that puts the quality in the art, not the artist. This concludes episode 23 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The First – a 100 word story She was the first letter in the alphabet and she knew it. A quick look from her was enough to melt most of the alphabet away. People became muted as she walked by, viciously robbed of their speech. She had the upper hand in debate, leaving every other letter far behind. She was a countenance, a word, and a world on her own. She stood on a strong foundation and no one could collapse her. A coma was just a pause for her and no semicolon could keep her away. It was only at the full stop that she stopped. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 22, The Upper Hand in Debate We use languages to communicate and words to understand each other. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at language. 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 language. Words don’t really have a meaning from the get-go. Meaning is what we pour into words. Words, when spoken, are just sounds, and the written word is just squiggly lines on a blank piece of paper. It’s the meaning we pour into those words that makes them count, and those meanings, in turn, can make those words of ours very powerful. Words create our story, help us communicate with each other, exchange ideas. When we collect all those words together, they make up our language. You might think your language is the same as the language of that guy living next door. You are not entirely wrong. Some meanings are almost universal and they are almost the same for everyone. The problem is that language has nuances and the meaning often gets lost in translation, even within the same language. Meanings might not be exactly the same for everyone. Part of this is because we sometimes find meaning between the lines, beyond the words. We might say something but the intonation of our voice can tell our listeners that we mean the exact opposite, even if we haven’t meant to. Someone can write a story that is completely clear to him, only to find out other people understood his story in a completely different way. As I understand this story, this is where my break comes in. I’ll be right back. —– The Traffic Witch – a 100 word story She had her own vehicle, commonly known as “The Broom”, and she enjoyed driving it through traffic tunnels. The rush of cars coming out through the other side, bumping into each other made her giggle. Getting rid of the evidence was a little messy. Usually, it involved accurately targeted lightning bolts, directed at various witnesses, both in the cars and around them. She did enjoy the various commentators, both on television and on YouTube. She liked it when they called her “a force of nature”. It was when they started connecting her to global warming that she gave up though. —– Welcome back. There are many languages in this world. Some have words that other languages don’t have. Some miss words that seem essential in other languages. Not all languages are created equal, and some seem to define the people who speak them. You can learn several languages, then you’ll have an insight into the minds of nations, how they use words, how they connect them into sentences. The order in which words connect in a sentence might give you insight into what is more important to the people who use a certain language. The very sound of a language might suggest that the people using it have a certain temperament that goes well with the general sound of that language. You think you understand your own language. You might learn another and think you understand that one as well. You would probably come across languages you don’t understand, and for someone who speaks a completely different language then you, your own language might be a mystery, a code to crack, an enigma. The problem is language in itself doesn’t have a meaning. You have to pour your own meaning into it as you grow up and understand more of your own language and any mistaken meaning gets embedded into your very own unique vocabulary. That’s where misunderstandings come from, and those can sometimes change the fate of nations. Language can be used to change the course of history or just the life of one human being. Language can be used to write a novel, a symphony or just to order a pizza. Language can be mundane, or it can be magnificent, it can be everything or nothing or anything in between. Language can even be used to write a podcast. This concludes episode 22 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The Message – a 100 word story The bottle washed upon the shore. As I picked it out with trembling hands, I could hear whispers from within. I hesitated for a moment, knowing what was bound to happen, then curiosity got the better of me and I unscrewed the cork. A happy genie burst from within and said: “I have a message for you from the Happy Genie Society. Your HGS membership has expired. Your terms are the regular ones. Once you served your sentence, you would be free again for another term respectively.” As I screamed, my body contracted and I was squeezed into the bottle. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 21, Whispers from Within Intelligence, there are many ways of achieving one that is greater than human intelligence. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at intelligence and the technological singularity. 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 intelligence. When you can recognize patterns in the world around you and have the ability to deduce the missing pieces in those patterns by using logic and the power of deduction, you are said to be intelligent. The more complex the patterns, the more intelligent you are. Most people can deduce that if we have 1 and then 2 followed by a 3, the next number would be 4. That is a very simple pattern and can be recognized by almost anyone. It is much harder to recognize the patterns in the movement of stars or the weather and predict how those would develop over the years. Intelligence can be measured. There is a range of human intelligence that is measured by intelligence tests and given a range of numbers called the intelligence quantity. Those IQ tests show that human intelligence mostly ranges between 85 and 115, 100 being the average number. A person with an IQ over 130 is considered a genius. The highest measured IQ level is somewhat between 250 and 300. Intellect is what drives human society forward, but it is limited. It can only take us so far. That is why we are creating artificial intelligence that can do things that human intelligence can’t. What happens when artificially created intelligence goes beyond human intelligence though? Let me find an intelligent excuse for taking a break. I’ll be right back. —– Memory – a 100 word story First, it was the small things, those little details like forgetting what I had for breakfast and if brushed my teeth, forgetting where I put the car keys, then it was the names of people, their faces, then the things I’ve seen on the morning news. I started making notes but I forgot to look at them. I would forget to eat and wonder why my midsection was making those funny noises. Finally, I forgot my name. I honestly can’t tell you who I am, where I came from or what I did. I just exist. No past. Only present. —– Welcome back. One of the biggest problems with current artificial intelligence is pattern recognition, but that is changing really fast. AI can already recognize faces and we are teaching it to recognize traffic patterns so it can drive our cars. It was predicted by very intelligent human beings that AI would exceed human intelligence, probably around the year 2045. Some say that this would be the end of the age of humans as the top of the life chain on earth or even the end of the human race as we know it. The point of time when an intelligence exists on earth that is greater then human intelligence is called the technological singularity. In astronomy, a singularity is what happens beyond an event horizon where the very rules of physics are not as they are in the world around us. This is seen at the boundary of a black hole where space and time distort completely. The event horizon of the technological singularity is intelligence that is greater than current human intelligence, one that is so great that it changes the world as we know it. This can come about in a few different ways, AI being only one of them. While AI is being worked on, ways of enhancing human intelligence are also being sought after. One way being suggested is the reorganization of the cells of your brain using nanotechnology. Another way is to actually merge our own intelligence with AI using implants, creating a hybrid intelligence. However we go about it, the technological singularity probably cannot be avoided. The reason we call it a singularity is that presumably, we don’t have the intelligence to perceive what a greater then human intelligence would do and how it would change our world. We have already changed our world considerably using human intelligence in ways that people wouldn’t have been able to imagine a hundred years ago. A superintelligence would be able to do this much faster than anyone realizes. When this happens we could wake up one day and not even recognize the world around us, and no one knows in what ways our world will change. We are heading into the unknown at top speed, and we don’t have our seatbelts on. We can either change ourselves to fit the ride by enhancing our own intelligence, or be left behind. This concludes episode 21 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The Gnome – a 100 word story The fawn couldn’t see them hiding in the bushes. The arrow was quick and painless, tranquilizing shot penetrating, inducing sleep. The Gnome ordered the two hooded men to upload the fawn onto the cart. The three of them took the hidden road, delivering the sleeping animal to the laboratory. The mechanical chicken lay motionless on the table, a lifeless shell, nothing more. The Gnome connecter her to the machine. Carefully, he connected the fawn to the other side. Buttons were pressed, levers pushed into place. Life energy was transferred and the mechanical chicken awakened, ready to serve her new master. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 20, The Hidden Road It seems like there’s a limited amount of things that exist in this world and that they tend to disappear as they are used by us. This is the essence of the idea of scarcity. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at scarcity. 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 scarcity. When we talk about a limited amount of something like food or trees, we are talking about scarcity. We say that wood is scarce and we should preserve as much of it as we possibly can because if we don’t, there won’t be any wood left anymore. That is not the whole story though. When you cut down a tree and make, let’s say, a chair out of it, you are merely changing the shape of the tree. If you then burn the chair, you are changing the condition of the tree from matter into energy. You can’t really get rid of the tree. You can only change its shape, definition or state. Food seems to disappear when we eat it, but that is not really the case. It becomes part of us, blending with us completely when we eat it. The saying “you are what you eat” has much truth in it. Science shows us that matter and energy are interchangeable. It also shows us that there is a finite amount of matter/energy in the universe and that amount is constant. It cannot change. This means that the amount of food and trees can’t truly change. Only thair shape and condition can change. Things can blend into each other and change their essence and meaning, but they don’t disappear altogether. On the other hand, a tree is not as useful to us as a burnt-out chair, and food can’t be used again after it blends with us. In that way, those things are scarce. I’m going to check the scarcity of things in my fridge. I’ll be right back. —– Wildcards – a 100 word story The Queen looked at the multi-colored roses in shocked amazement. Seven and Five giggles softly while Two just stared madly at her. “What are you doing?” she asked, her amazement turning to anger. “Why the fact is, you see, we are painting all your roses” answered Two. The Queen turned the perfect shade of red, the one she liked for her roses and shouted: “Off with their heads.” “Not this time,” said Seven and Five in unison and started splashing colors at the Queen. They splashed her, then splashed her some more until she was completely devoured by the colors. —– Welcome back. So we made a chair out of our tree, then we burned it. Can we get it back? Theoretically, this is a possibility, and here we will be going into the future of scarcity. We are currently mastering the ability to move atoms. The field of study that concentrates on moving atoms is called nanotechnology. If we could get back the energy of the burnt tree-chair and somehow convert it back into matter, then rearrange the atoms of that matter back the way they were when we first found them, we could theoretically get our tree back. This way of getting back the same tree might prove to be too difficult to accomplish and too expensive. There might be a more practical way, but you won’t get the same tree. What you will get though is the end of scarcity. 3d printers are on their way to becoming a household commodity. This idea of printing actual everyday objects is becoming a reality. Currently, those printers are very limited by the materials you can use, but that is going to change in the future. When the ability to move atoms makes its way into 3d printing, imagination would be the only real limit. You would take one material and change it to another by changing the composition of its molecules. This means you would take cheap materials and make everyday objects from them. Your only limit would be the composition of the atoms themselves. You would have to use atoms that can compose the right kind of molecules for the materials you want to use, but then if a certain material is missing you could always create a new one to replace it. In that way you would be able to print any object you could think of. Our economy depends on scarcity. When you can print any object using a 3d printer, there is no scarcity anymore. You would be able to print out food, trees, chairs, cloths. You would be able to use 3d printers to print 3d printers. You could even be able to print money, but money would be useless. The age of 3d printing and nanotechnology would truly be the age of abundance. Something that’s already being worked on is the ability to print replacement organs for the human body. Eventually, we would be able to print a whole new body for ourselves, staying young forever. We would be able to rearrange the atoms in our brains, becoming more intelligent. This is just one of the things that might herald what is called the technological singularity, but this is a topic for another episode. For now, let us just remember that trees never die. They just change their essence. This concludes episode 20 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Forty – a 100 word story Forty butterflies are dancing on my grave. Forty red flowers are arranged in a circle on the cold stone. Forty paid maidens are mocking me. I scream “I’m alive, let me out,” but no voice comes out. The earth tastes sour in my mouth. I’ve been here for forty years. Still, there’s no sign of me becoming hungry or tired. I’m forever doomed by a spell to stay alive in my grave, a spell whispered by the woman I betrayed. The walls of my grave disintegrated long ago. I’m now part of the soil, here forever, paying the bitter price. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 19, Arranged in a Circle Money is the most agreed-upon symbol of exchange. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at money and the monetary system. 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 money. From the dawn of time, people exchanged stuff. You had a cow, you needed five chickens. Your neighbor had five chickens but he needed a cow. You exchanged your cow with your neighbor’s chickens. There was a problem though. No one knew how many chickens a cow was worth. As roaming tribes turned to city dwellers and then collections of cities turned into countries, a method was devised by the rulers of those countries for the exchange of goods. This method is called the monetary system and it evolved from something called a debit note or the “I would give you later what I promised you” note. Sometimes, you just didn’t have the cow to give to your neighbor in exchange for his chickens at the moment. You would write down “I owe you a cow for five chickens” on a piece of paper. That was held by your neighbor as proof that you got the chickens but didn’t yet give him the cow and he could come to you at a later time with that piece of paper demanding his cow. That piece of “I owe you” paper evolved into a law binding document called a debit note and that, in turn, evolved into money. You didn’t have to actually own a cow anymore. All you needed was a piece of paper symbolizing the idea of a cow as an exchange unit. You could get that cow later. In time, the cow was forgotten altogether and that piece of paper called “money” took up a life of its own, becoming a symbol of the exchange of goods. You can still buy cows and chickens with money, but it’s not attached to them anymore. Money has become a thing of itself, it’s own entity. I’ll take a moment to count all the money I don’t have. I’ll be right back. —– Pod – a 100 word story I live in a pod. The smell of peas drives me crazy, but the rent is good. The landlord is reasonably flexible. The living space is a little dense, but I get along. It’s amazing how spacious a place can seem if you organize the furniture just about right. Still, one day I hope to buy my very own carrot. Sure, it’s long and a little thin, but I like the space better and anyway, green is not really my color. Another thing, if I forget my keys, I can eat my way in. Try doing that with a pod. —– Welcome back. Money is changing, evolving. As a symbol, it was always attached to physical objects. As the monetary system evolved, it was decided to attach the value of money to metals that were considered rare at the time, such as gold and silver. The amount of money distributed was decided by the amount of metals the country had stored. Some of the money was then made of those metals. That’s why we actually have coins. As time passed, the amount of money far exceded the amount of metals it represented and money became even more of a symbol then a representation of real tangible objects. When computers came alone, a means of virtually storing money as numbers was devised, and a means to access that money was created, called a credit card. Money was now stored in banks in the form of numbers. Today, the amount of printed or “real” money is greatly reduced. While some money is still getting printed, the amount of it is shrinking considerably as time goes by. Money as a physical thing is on its way to disappearing altogether and as it does, new forms of money that are completely virtual from the get-go are starting to appear. The Bitcoin appeared at the beginning of the 21st century as one of the first cryptocurrencies, a money exchange system that is completely based on computer encryption systems and artificial scarcity. This points to the problem with the monetary system. It depends on scarcity. Abundance is the enemy of monetary value. Money is moving to the virtual world, becoming mare numbers on a computer screen, and as it does it needs to find a new form of scarcity if it is to survive as a symbol. The value of money depends on the fact that there is a limited amount of it. This means it might not survive the move to the digital world. The ability to copy and paste numbers that is inherent in computing might finally kill money altogether, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We might be heading for the end scarcity. Things won’t exist in limited amounts anymore when the printing of physical objects would become commonplace, but this is a topic for another episode. For now, let us just remember that one cow might be equal to five chickens. This concludes episode 19 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Rusty Steel – a 100 word story Don’t bring me those shiny steel rods. I like my steel rusty. I like it crunchy. I like steel that makes little popping sounds when I chew it. I like steel that slowly dissolves inside my body, leaving a warm sensation in all the right places. I used to nibble on rocks, but it wasn’t the same. Tiny pieces would get stuck in my teeth. It would take hours clearing. It was messy, and the taste was kind of stale. Now I’m on a steel diet. I’m telling you, rusty steel is the way to go. Here, try some yourself. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 18, Little Popping Sounds Augmented reality is starting to supplement our everyday lives. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at augmented reality. 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 augmented reality. Reality comes to us on a “what you see is what you get” basis, but what if we could add to it? That is where augmented reality comes, and draws added layers on reality. Today, most of the augmented reality you would experience would come through applications on your phone. You would hold your phone up to reality and it would draw additional things on it, from little pokemon entities to furniture. The augmented reality of today is used for everything from gaming to more practical uses like interior design. Projects like Google Glass take augmented reality even further by placing augmented reality right in front of our eyes. It draws images on the lens of our glasses. Our glasses become little computers adding images to our everyday reality. Developers are already looking into using contact lenses as computers. The next step would be to embed computers right into our brains, and the day that happens is not as far as one might think. Computer graphics are becoming more and more realistic by the day and distinguishing what is real from what is actually augmented reality would eventually become very hard. I can’t really distinguish if the break I’m about to take is real or not. I’ll have to check that out. I’ll be right back. —– Knock-Knock – a 100 word story Janice was a practical joker. The number of times we had to ask her “who’s there?” was ridiculous. We tried to stay away, but she would follow us, never understanding the hint. When they fired her, we all cheered. It was later that we read about it in the papers. She jumped off some bridge or another. Now she wanders the office floor telling us her knock-knock jokes. If someone refuses to play alone, he suffers dire consequences. Only five of us are left now. Here she comes. Let me utter the words that would keep us alive: “Who’s there?” —– Welcome back. Today, augmented reality can’t really be touched. It lives inside our screens. This is going to change once programmable matter becomes available. The idea of programming matter itself emerged in the 1990s and is currently being researched in various laboratories around the world. This would enable us to augment our reality with tangible matter, one that can be touched and shaped at our will, or rather, the will of skilled programmers. Games are where the application of programmable matter would probably start, making gaming more exciting and real. Entertainment is a very profitable market and where there is profit, there is often groundbreaking research. Augmenting our reality by programmable matter would then bleed to more practical applications like designing your home or education. Unfortunately, military and crime are also very profitable so research into programmable matter and augmented reality would prosper on those two very questionable fields too. People have a tendency to group into “them versus us” groups. When technology becomes too tangible this can become dangerous. Currently, augmented reality is drawn on our computer screens and is pretty harmless. Once it leaves our computer screens through programmable matter or gets drawn directly into our brains through implanted computers, it becomes dangerous. Programmable matter can be programmed to kill you and images can be put into your very brain that induce madness. This kind of technology can’t be stopped. It will come whether we want it or not. It’s inevitable. The question of how we decide to use it is, unfortunately, not really up to us but up to the people who profit from it. This concludes episode 18 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The New Assistant – a 100 word story Plutonium Trifluoride is not to be trifled with. Those violet crystals are investigated as a source of nuclear energy in some well-known laboratories by respected scientists, but that’s not their real power. Mixed with the right ingredients using the right combinations of words whispered in exactly the right intonations, great things could be achieved, sinister things too. Structures can be changed, tissue morphed into shapes. You see that little yellow monkey over there? That was my last assistant. You better excel in your tasks here. I’ve got many of those violet crystals left, and I know how to use them. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 17, Those Violet Crystals Science is the tool for finding out the truth about how everything works. It has a method for finding that out, and that method is called the scientific method. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at the scientific method. 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 the scientific method. Curiosity is one of the base pillars human existence stands upon. It makes life interesting and meaningful. Curiosity compels us to find out how the world around us works. In ancient times, that has often led to false assumptions and misconceptions about how things actually work. People invented gods and mythologies to explain the workings of everything from the changing of seasons to the movement of the ocean waves. That is because observation is masked by our senses and our beliefs, and those tend to distort things quite a bit. This is why the scientific method was invented, to discover the truth in a relatively unbiased way. We begin our journey to the truth with the question of “how does this work?” That, in essence, is the whole purpose of science. It is there to give the answer to that singular question. Science attempts to bypass our senses and biases by using skepticism, by repeating experiments again and again and by using control groups. The heart of the scientific method is doubt. It looks at the evidence, examins it again and again until it finds out beyond reasonable doubt if things are true or false and even then if evidence comes that disprove something that was thought to be true, science changes it’s mind and marks it as false. I have new evidence that suggests that this is where I take a break. I’ll be right back. —– Monkey See – a 100 word story I named my monkey Gandhi because of his habit of turning the other cheek. Other monkeys would charge at him, attack him but he would just stand there smiling his little monkey smile, holding his hand out to them. Eventually, they just tore him to pieces. I still miss the little fellow. Sometimes, when things go crazy at work, I think to myself, “What would my little Gandhi do?”, then I remember how he ended up and I just obliterate my fellow hairless white monkeys. I use presentations and flow charts, but it amounts to the same. No one survives. —– Welcome back. The scientific method starts with observation. You want to know how something works, you observe it, you come up with a theory of how it works. Your theory is not the truth. It’s just you saying “I think it works that way.” The next stage is experimenting to see if things actually work the way you think they do. In fact, trying to disprove it is as important as trying to prove it. You always have to keep in mind that things might work in a completely different way from the way you think they do. That is why one experiment is not enough. You have to repeat the experiment, again and again, enough times until you are absolutely sure things work the way you think they do, and even that is not enough. Your data might be biased. That is why you have to let other people check you up, repeat the experiment on their own terms and see if it works the same for them. After different people do an experiment enough times to come up to the conclusion something works in a certain way, someone might come and say “I don’t think it actually works that way. I think it works in a different way. Here is how I think it works.” In short, someone might come up with a completely different theory of how something works, then you have to experiment to see if their theory is the correct one. Science has to be open-minded. It has to be open to changing its mind. If a shred of new evidence comes up that contradicts the previous one, science has to check it out and if it proves to be true, it has to accept the new evidence until a new one comes along. Using the scientific method to find out how our world works mean our understanding of the world around us is always changing, evolving. One hypothesis after another is discarded for a better one. This means we might never truly understand the world around us, but we are never going to stop trying. This is because we are curious creatures, and curiosity is at the base of our existence. This concludes episode 17 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The Hungry Forest – a 100 word story The forest whispered to Anna. She crawled dipper into the closet. The forest creatures were coming for her, and she knew they were going to skin her alive, then tear her apart limb from limb. She was terrified, but she was also prepared. She clutched the little device the strange man from the forest gave her and activated it. The closet started to spin around her, becoming a blur, then it disappeared altogether. She was no longer there. The forest creatures would have to feed on some other poor soul today. She thanked the spirit of human ingenuity for teleports. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 16, The Closet Started to Spin Imagination can be real magic, or it may be the biggest of lies. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at imagination. 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 imagination. Imagination is often used to tell a story. To imagine the story, you would often begin with a question, and that question would often begin with “What if…” There are “What if…” questions that are close to our everyday reality like “What if I didn’t have to go to work?” or “What if that next-door neighbor was a foreign spy?”. Those would produce stories that can happen in real life and in fact, those imaginary stories might even be similar to events that actually happened. There are also “what if” questions that create completely separate realities like “What if walking trees and hobbits really existed?” or “What if there was a substance called aether that could be used to control elements, and those, in turn, could be used for magic?”. Those “what if…” questions would produce stories that would require us to suspend our disbelief if we want to enjoy them since they would be very different from what we experience in our everyday reality. Science and technology also rely on imagination for progress. We wouldn’t have the modern world if we didn’t have questions such as “What if two people on the other sides of the world could instantly talk to each other?” or “What if we could put the phone, the television and the radio into our computer?”. Other imaginative questions are going to shape our future, questions such as “What if your car could drive all by itself?” and “What if we could create objects that can be controlled and shaped by computers?”. Another very imaginative question is “What if I take a break right now?”. I’ll be right back. —– The Egg – a 100 word story “But… can you do it?” I asked, eyeing him suspiciously “can you make it hatch?”. I never liked those federal types. I always suspect them of being oblivious to the consequences. “Nothing to it,” said the man in the black overcoat. I checked my watch. It was nearly time now. “Just let me inspect it one last time,” I said. “Sure, Just don’t break it” he answered. The Pterospondylus egg lay before me. I examined it gently, then they took it away. As I watched the egg in the incubator, I envisioned a future where flying dinosaurs grace our skies. —– Welcome back. Imagination is used to create fictional stories. You can find those stories on books, in radio plays, in the theater and on video games among other things. Some of those stories are very elaborate and create whole new worlds for us to enjoy. The lore of those worlds can go back to prehistory, inventing anything from mythology to geography. Entering those worlds, you can leave your everyday life for a while, forgetting your everyday troubles. That is the magic of imagination. Some people can get lost in imagination and start believing imaginary things to be real. They can start believing the earth is flat and stands on an endless pillar made out of turtles, or that evolution is a lie. While imagination can be a good thing, it can also be used to create fake news and conspiracy theories. People can imagine all sorts of things and start believing them. They can imagine we never landed on the moon or that Elvis is alive. This comes from believing the things you imagine to be true without checking them first. Being skeptical of imaginative statements is healthy. When someone makes a statement that is conspiratory, not in line with what we know or outright illogical, we must look for scientific evidence to disprove that statement. Real scientific proof for anything should follow the scientific method, but this is a topic for another episode. For now, just remember that imagination can be a great vehicle for enriching your life, but you should always know how to distinguish it from reality. This concludes episode 16 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The Real Rose – a 100 word story I was standing at the edge of known space. The grid lines were extremely beautiful. That was it. I was going to jump right into reality. I was going to smell a real rose. I made it, half expecting to disappear in a cloud of pixels. The clockwork device I built converted me into a real person and ejected me into the real world. I could feel the real breeze on my face. I found a flower shop. I picked a single rose and smelled it, breathing it in deeply. I wrinkled my nose in disgust. That rose was stinky. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 15, A Cloud of Pixels While our everyday industrialized world tends to be made out of different shades of gray, it’s not the end all be all of color. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at color. 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 color. When a light source goes through a prism, it breaks into different colors. The specific colors we get depend on the color of the light source and can be influenced by the composition of the air it goes through. Usually, when we talk about separating color through a prism, the specific color separation that comes from a white color source here on earth is the one we refer to. That is because we happen to live on earth and white color sources are the ones most common here. The colors you get from a white light source also happen to be the ones you get from a rainbow. Raindrops can sometimes act as prisms, breaking up colors and creating a rainbow in the sky. A rainbow is actually composed of many colors, some of them invisible, but we tend to break it into seven colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. That particular choice of colors is actually not natural. It was created by Newton who chose that particular number of colors to coincide with the white notes in a musical octave. Beyond those colors are the ones we can’t see like ultraviolet and infrared. The color composition of a rainbow can be broken down quite differently, but we tend to see those particular colors since we are culturally trained to see them from an early age. We absorbed those as the actual colors of a rainbow from our environment for so long, that we just believe them to be the true colors of a rainbow. I see the color of a break coming up. I’ll be right back. —– Fishing – a 100 word story The packet of cherry-flavored blow pops was happily floating on the water. Little Linda bent over and tried to pick it up. Apparently, it was stuck. The kid pulled at it. The packet seemed to pull back at her. She pulled harder. The packet also pulled harder until it knocked Linda off her feet and started dragging her right into the water. Linda just wouldn’t let go. She really wanted those colorful yummy looking lollipops. Eventually, she was pulled right into the water where a shark with a fishing rod put her in a basket and walked away with her. —– Welcome back. Color can be a cultural thing and the meaning we give to color can change by where you grew up. For example, red can represent life and sensuality in some places while representing danger and violence in others. Blue can represent peace and tranquillity but can also represent sadness and depression depending on where you are. Many times, the way we perceive a color depends on the meaning we absorbed for it while growing up. Differences in the way we perceive color can also be embedded in the very language we speak. Take blue and light blue for example. If you are English speaking you would perceive both as blue, different tones of the same color. In Hebrew though, there are different words for them, “Kachol” for blue and “Tchelet” for light blue, so they might be perceived as distinct colors. There are many examples of that and different colors can be perceived as one color in some languages and two colors in some. In some places, for example, red and orange are the same color and have only one word for both of them. Different people from the same culture can also perceive colors differently. That is because we don’t actually see colors. We see our brain’s interpretation of color. That is most obvious where the boundaries between colors are blurry, for example, the boundary between blue and violet. In effect, Your dark blue can be violet for someone else. It’s hard to tell where your orange ends and where someone’s red begins. Some people can’t distinguish opposite colors. Green and red would seem like the same color to them. This is just one form of color blindness. In more extreme cases, people can’t see color at all. They just see the world in different shades of gray. This is just another one of the problems we have for being separate beings with separate brains who interpret the world in a separate way, but it’s also just part of the magic of what makes us unique and human. This concludes episode 15 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Mortalos – a 100 word story The voices whispered to him, promising more power. He ignored them, focusing void and shadow magic on a single candle. The candle lit, happy flame bursting into life. He used the powers on a second candle, then made sure the table map had no wrinkles, the plates were set exactly opposite each other and the cutlery was positioned just right. “Dinner is served,” he announced. Being an undead shadow priest was not what he imagined, but it had its benefits and the master paid well. Mortalos The Butler was looking forward to the benefits of an extraordinarily long retirement plan. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 14, The Butler Was Looking Forward While magic in the real world is based on tricks and illusions, in the world of fantasy it is derived from invented science that is often derived from mythology and discarded scientific theories. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at magic. 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 magic. In the real world, a magician is an illusionist, a trickster of the mind, a mentalist who tricks you into believing something happened when in fact, something entirely different is right in front of your eyes. A good magician is actually a psychologist or a social scientist, analyzing your behavior, or the behavior of an entire audience, then using that analysis to create an illusion such as the disappearance or the transformation of an object. He can trick you into believing he knows something he doesn’t by extracting the information from you, without your even noticing it. For example, he can tell you something that happened in your past by having you tell him the event while having you believe you hasn’t really told him anything. Some magic tricks call for an illusion in which what you see is not physically possible, like a person suspended in mid-air or in a box that is sawn in two. This calls for manipulation of the angle in which you view the illusion or the participation of another person who is in on the trick. A good magician can use mirrors, smoke or just position things a certain way for them to look impossible. In the end, it’s all tricks. Magic in the real world is not real. If it’s real, it’s not really magic, it’s science, and science can sometimes look like magic to the untrained eye, but it’s not really magic. The science of fantasy magic is something completely different though. I’m going to magically disappear now and appear on the other side of a short break. I’ll be right back. —– Human Food – a 100 word story It was green, wet and wrinkled. Quansity stared at it with disgust. “What is it?” he asked. “It’s Human food,” said Ginswey knowingly, “it’s called a pickle.” Quansity continued staring at the dripping green thing on the green dining table. “You mean they eat that stuff?” he asked, horrified. “Yes, and quite eagerly too” answered Ginswey, “but that’s not the worst thing those barbarians eat.” Quansity held his breath and started looking a little green himself. “You mean… there’s worst?” he asked, astonished. “Yes,” said Ginsway, “there is this thing called eggplant lasagna. It’s very popular, or so I’m told.” —– Welcome back. Magic in fantasy is often derived from mythology and scientific theories that have been disputed. Until the end of the 19th-century, scientists believed there’s a substance called “aether” that connects the universe and keeps everything from falling apart. This theory has been long since abandoned, but it’s the basis of magic in several fantasy writings, where things can be sometimes pulled out of thin air using the aether. The aether in fantasy can be a magical power that powers all life and it can be the basis of using magical powers. Another thing fantasy worlds use is the idea of basic elements as a source of magical powers. Those are not the same elements that exist in the real world and they are not made of atoms. They are more akin to the elements taken from several mythologies, where base elements such as fire, earth, and wind were said to make up our world. While we now know that the world is made up of atoms, those base elements of mythology are perfect for fantasy writing and are often used there. The kind of magic you use in fantasy would be influenced by the element you are attuned to. If you are attuned to a fire element, for example, you would be able to shoot fire out of your hands, but if you are attuned to the water element you would shoot ice instead. It is common in fantasy to mix and match elements to create spectacular literary magical special effects. Another literary device for fantasy magic is the one that moves machinery. Machines in fantasy worlds often don’t use real-world mechanics and instead rely on some magical power or another to function, most often a crystal with magical powers. In fact, crystals in fantasy are often used as a conduit or storage device for magical energy. In that way, magic can have a physical form that can be stored and used at will. Magic crystals can power anything from small vehicles to whole cities. Fantasy itself is a vessel that stores magic that enriches our lives and can make them much more interesting while stimulating our imagination. This concludes episode 14 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Snow – a 100 word story The snow has been falling, dripping on my heart for days, and it is now frozen. No sound is coming out, no internal clock ticking, clicking the days of my mortal prison away. Gone are the days, chased by time rushing by, washing me away in its clockwork tide, forgotten in a prison of ice. The rain will wash my pain away, leave me clean, cold and still. I’m forever blue, in a crystalized ice cage, here I stay, unmoving, uncaring, for all my cares are gone, forgotten, as I forever sleep, with a frozen heart, buried under deep snow. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 13, Clockwork Tide Some say that everything that happens is predetermined by cause and effect. Some say it’s all just random events. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at determinism, causation, and randomness. 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 randomness versus determinism. First, let’s look at randomness as reflected by chaos geometry which derives from chaos theory. Chaos theory studies the mathematics of randomness. While studying random numbers, it was discovered that those numbers follow the same pattern of many natural occurrences. Many of the natural things that appear random actually have a method within them and that method follows chaos geometry. If you look at the edge of a random shape, let’s say – a cloud, you would see shapes that resemble the shape of the whole cloud, only smaller and not exactly the same, just resembling the whole cloud. That is true for any random thing you would look at, from the shape of a snowflake to the way the weather behaves. Things that appear random seem to hold the seed of themselves. That is the essence of chaos geometry and it suggests that nothing is truly random. Next, let’s look at cause and effect. When clouds collide it causes a release of an electrical charge, that manifests itself in the form of thunder and lightning. If that electrical charge hits something, let’s say a tree, it can cause the tree to catch on fire. If the tree is close to other trees they can also catch fire and you can get a forest fire. This is called a chain of events. In this chain of events, colliding clouds caused a forest fire. The question is, where do chains of events start and when do they end? You can take the events further and see what happens after the fire is over or go back and see how the clouds were formed in the first place. Events don’t start with one event or finish with another, they are a continuous progression of one event leading to another with lots of side events branching from them. Determinism says that events can only go one way. There is really only one option for the events to unfold. For example, the only thing that can possibly happen now is that I take a break. I’ll be right back. —– The Chair – a 100 word story “Address the chair,” said the head table. “I beg to differ” uttered the chest of drawers but the cupboard shushed her. The respectable window curtain walked in. An appreciative silence filled the room. A sofa moaned. “I think that sofa ate too much last night” whispered a bed to a cabinet. The cabinet just shrugged and said “that sofa would be very hungry when there is no food left. There is a limited amount of unsuspecting people around you know.” The chair cleared his throat and said: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all furniture are created equal…” —– Welcome back. Determinism tells us that everything has a cause and effect that can only lead one way. You can’t really prevent that forest fire. There is no real choice. If we get all the facts about what causes what we can mathematically calculate all the causes and effects and accurately predict the future. The problem is that we can’t collect all the causes and all the effects. There are just too many of them. Another question that comes to mind is if everything is really predetermined, do we really make decisions? Is there such a thing as free will? The same way that a forest fire is caused by clouds colliding, our thought process is determined by a combination of what we experience and the structure of our genome. Everything we are is determined by some outside force or by the way we are physically built. If you want to believe in free will, you could say that we can decide what we take in from our environment and what we decide to use to build our self-identity. Even if this is an illusion and we don’t really decide, I believe we should try to become a better version of ourselves. That is because this is who I am. I believe that we should strive to leave the world in a better state then we got it. It doesn’t matter if things are predetermined or not. It is the choices we presume to make that matter, and we should not act as if the world is deterministic. We should embrace the illusion of choice and make a better world for ourselves. This concludes episode 13 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Aurora Borealis – a 100 word story The northern lights wanted to play with the sky, but it was not feeling that playful, so they descended the earth and tried to play with the trees instead. The trees became tired since the lights were too fast for them so the lights had to let them go. They tried to play with the earth instead but it was too hard and dry. As the lights began ascending the sky, a bird started singing to them. That delighted the lights so they started singing themselves. You might still hear them singing to this day if you listen very carefully. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 12, The Lights Were Too Fast Sentience is your sense of self, the knowledge you exist. Consciousness is the idea of being awake and in the real world. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at sentience, consciousness and the interaction between them. 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 sentience and consciousness. You know you exist, at least you think you do. You can see and feel your own body through your senses and you are aware of your own thoughts. Your senses might not be as reliable as you think (and we’ve seen that on previous episodes) but you spent enough time with yourself to know there’s definitely something there. There is a “you,” isn’t there? It’s not as clear cut as it seems. It would be easier if your consciousness was continuous, but it isn’t. Your mind is prone to wander off in a daydream and in sleep, it seems to be somewhere else entirely. Dreams are like a break in consciousness. Even in dreams, you seem to be self-aware of your existence, but when you wake up, none of it seems real anymore, sometimes including your dream self. The state of consciousness in the dream state is so different than the waking state of consciousness, that you can start questioning which is the real state of consciousness. While it is a common conception that the waking state is the real state of consciousness, that is a hard thing to prove. We just take it for granted, but then, how real is real? How about someone who has lost consciousness completely and is stuck in a constant state of dream? Is his reality less real than our reality? How can you be sure that you are actually in a conscious state? I’ve been dreaming of taking a break. I’ll be right back. —– The Red Yak of Destiny – a 100 word story The Red Yak of Destiny is an understanding god. When we need crops for the winter, he gives us crops. When we battle with the Twotelgloo tribe, we win. Last summer, I went and asked The Red Yak of Destiny for a son, but instead, he gave me a daughter. I got angry at him. I went back to him and said: “you gave me a daughter when I asked for a son.” He just smiled and asked me to bring my wife. Next summer I had two sons. Sure, they have long red fur and horns, but they’re mine. —– Welcome back. You are aware of yourself even when you are inside a dream. You can think, though your thoughts may be scattered and disorganized. Your sentient dream state is different, surreal. In fact, surrealism was originally inspired by dreams. In dreams, the disjointed nature of thought is more obvious than in the wakening state, but your everyday thought is sometimes just as disorganized as your dream thoughts. Thoughts wander from one topic to another and your awareness of your surroundings sometimes conflicts with your preoccupation with your inner turmoil. You do know you exist, even if your thoughts are sometimes random and your consciousness is questionable. In fact, you can’t really know for sure if you’re conscious. Knowing that you exist, your own sentience can be summed up in a single sentence, I think therefore I am, even though I might be unconscious. That way, sentience, and self-awareness might exist even without consciousness. This whole existence of yours might actually, be an ongoing dream. This concludes episode 12 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The Off-Mission – a 100 word story The clowns came over today. They were just on their way to Kentucky. The big boss knows who to send on an off-mission, I mean, no one would suspect a clown. They always get their target and those poor bastards just don’t know what hit them. Was it the little plastic hammer? Maybe it was the pennywhistle? Those are so deadly. One note played the right way and all the gray stuff comes running out of your ears screaming. Not this time though. This time it was that little electric hand buzzer. Gets them every time. Those clowns are good. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 11, Stuff Comes Running Out of Your Ears Repetition creates patterns, and patterns can help us organize our world, making some chaotic sense of it. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at patterns. 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 patterns. We need to keep our world organized in order to make some sense of it. Patterns can sometimes come to our aid here. They can give us the security that comes with knowing that one thing comes after another. Let’s consider a simple pattern as an example, the pattern of day and night. That pattern has two opposite components that fluctuate with each other, coming one after the other. The repeatable pattern of “day, night, day, night,” is recognized by us and we know it to be a relatively unchanging pattern. Night always comes after day and vice versa. We expect that. In a way, this simple pattern lets us predict the future and that is what pattern recognition often does. Patterns in nature are pretty common though not often as precise and sometimes quite chaotic. You can find it in the wandering of birds or in the sleep habits of polar bears. You can find patterns in the movement of clouds and the changing of seasons. The fact that patterns let us predict the future can help us find out where those birds are most likely to wander off to next year and they can help us create weather forecasts. If we make pattern recognition into a science, we can even predict the future of the human race. That is how the notion of the technological singularity, which I’m probably going to explore in a future episode, came to be, by exploring the exponential growth patterns of technological trends. I’m trending towards taking a break right now. I’ll be right back. —– Army – a 100 word story The army of clowns slipped and fell, slipped and fell. Child laughter could be heard from houses with barricaded windows. Apparently, someone buttered up the road. Dogs started barking nearby. Doors opened and the dogs started coming out, seeking out the clowns. Bites and screams followed. “You should have stayed in the circus” shouted someone, “You make a lousy army”. Some people started opening their windows and throwing flaming rocks at them. The clowns started running away in the opposite direction, trying to avoid bursting into flames and running out of town. That’s how the army of clowns was defeated. —– Welcome back. We can recognize patterns in the most unlikely of places. We can find patterns in the movement of mountains and be surprised by the fact that mountains actually move. We can also find patterns in the movement of people and be surprised by the fact that people actually move. Patterns in the movement of people are called behavior patterns and they are the basis of a brunch of psychology called social sciences. People don’t move the same way as birds. They don’t fly, well, mostly they don’t. Studying thair movement and thair behavior patterns can bring much insight into what those crazy humans are up to. Looking at those patterns you might find many similarities between both individual humans and groups of humans, but then you might notice that every individual human is a little bit different. Groups of people also have behavior patterns that are similar but not exactly the same. That follows the rules of chaos geometry, were looking at the whole you zoom in on the smaller parts of the whole and see that they are similar but not the same. When a pattern is chaotic it can’t be predicted precisely but only in an approximate manner. That way we can predict that the next episode of this podcast would have two 100 word stories and a single topic cut into two parts, but we can’t predict what those would be exactly. This concludes episode 11 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The Tenant – a 100 word story The landlord opened his mouth and closed it in a fish like fashion. A sound came out of his lips, not unlike the merger of a washing machine and a tardis. Finally, he came back to his senses and said “The sign outside this apartment strictly states ‘no pets allowed.’” I smiled and simply said, “this is not a pet.” “Oh yeh?” he retorted, now growing a little agitated “then what is it?” “Why – it’s an elephant” I stated. “And what do you need an elephant for?” he asked, angry and exasperated. “That’s easy,” I said, “to hide the giraffe.” —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 10, A Fish Like Fashion Science tells us that time is a fourth dimension. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at time. 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 the scientific aspect of time called the speed of time. Time is actually perceived in different speeds. The speed in which you perceive time is influenced by your own speed in relation to your environment, as well as the mass of your environment, or rather the mass of the materials your environment is made of, including the mass of the planet you are currently standing on. You are standing on a planet I hope. Anyway, if you leave your planet, the speed of time relative to that of you and your planet start to change and your personal time, in fact, speed a little as opposed to the time of your planet. The reason that happens is that the further you get from your planet, the influence of you planet’s mass lessens. You yourself wouldn’t be able to perceive that change since your personal time would run at the same speed, but for anyone standing on the planet you would, in theory, appear a little slower though the discrepancy is so small it would probably be unnoticeable. This discrepancy in the speed of time can be measured and in fact, it has been measured using atomic clocks. Your own speed also influences the time flow as perceived by you and your environment. If you go really fast and I mean really, really fast, your time would slow relative to the time outside of speeding you. From your perspective, you would appear to be going at a normal speed. For everyone else, you would appear to slow down considerably. Time is funny that way. Speaking of time, it’s time for a break. I’ll be right back. —– Mustache – a 100 word story They say I’m a compulsive mustache painter. I was banned from most of the art establishments when I was much younger. I have a court junction, preventing me from getting within a three hundred mile radius of any art shop. When the long playing records started appearing, many of those famous musician faces got decorated before they caught me. That’s when I started doing actual faces. They say Salvador Dali never recovered from what I did to him, went completely and utterly insane, but it was after Stalin that I was finally put away. My inmates all have whiskers now. —– Welcome back. Orienting yourself inside the time continuum can be difficult. You can make this simpler by measuring time. We do that by breaking time into regular pieces. We call those pieces hours, minutes and seconds. Time itself is a flow and does not really break, so those pieces are an illusion, put there by us to make time more manageable. We use those measurements to predict and sometimes influence the time things happen. Time seems to flow in a single direction from one minute to the next one, things happen one after the other, or at least that’s how we perceive them. The truth might be more complicated. Using particle accelerators, scientists found out that some particles can actually go backward in time. Those particles are much smaller than actual atoms, so this is something that happens on a very small scale. We apparently can’t go back in time ourselves, though if we would be able to find a way to make lots of those particles go back in time at the same time, who knows? For now, we would have to accept that we are trapped in time, flowing at a certain speed in one direction. This concludes episode 10 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– The Birds – a 100 word story At first, Hitchcock thought about using flies. He worked laboriously for months with a fly trainer before ruling that out. Then he thought about using cats. The cats had other ideas and putting them on telephone poles proved to be a near impossibility. Their inability to fly was also a problem, so he turned his mind to using bats. It worked well at first until daytime came and the bats decided it was time to go to sleep. He went for a long walk which ended with a bird staining his best vest with bird poop. The rest is history. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 9, The Cats Had Other Ideas You know, some things are true and some are just, well, not true. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at what is true and what is false and how we can tell them apart. 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 truth. In order to get our daily dose of truth, we must observe it and we get the most of it through our 5 senses. Our senses can be kind of tricksters though. They sometimes trick us into believing things are true when they are not. If you draw two circles and a curved line on a piece of paper for example, you would see a smiley face. There is no actual face there. There are only two circles and a curved line. Our senses are clearly deceiving us. There are plenty of ways to trick our senses, especially our visual sense. What you see is not always what you get. For example, you can be tricked into believing two circles that are of the same size are actually of different sizes, by playing with their colors and the colors of their background. You can make straight lines appear curved by placing a grid of lines behind them, organized in a specific way. Knowing that, it is only natural to be skeptical about the truth as depicted by our senses. As a skeptic it would be harder to get to the bottom of what is true and what is not. You might become a scientist and use the scientific method to get to the truth. It’s the surest way to get there. I’ll be talking about the scientific method in another episode but right now, the truth is that I need a break. I’ll be right back. —– A Loss of Time – a 100 word story I lost my watch today, which wouldn’t be a problem if I wasn’t the keeper of time. You see, my watch is the key for time running smoothly, regularly and in an orderly manner. Now that it’s lost, no one has the time, except for a few time sensitives. People are rushing around like crazy, faster, faster, not even realizing anything is wrong. Time is accelerating towards a time bang, an end of all times when everything would happen all at once, then time would stop altogether. This is why you have to help me. Have you seen my watch? —– Welcome back. The truth can be slippery and what you see might rely on where you are in relative relation to the truth. Let’s say for example that you are standing at the corner of a house. Let’s also say that this particular house have four walls. From where you stand you can see two of the walls and they are both painted light yellow. Would you say that the color of that house is light yellow? The whole house? Now, let’s say someone who has been standing at the exact opposite of the house comes your way and tells you the other two walls are in fact blue? How do you know if he is telling the truth? If he is telling the truth, how do you know someone hasn’t gone and painted the other two walls in red while he was away? Truth can change while you look the other way. Truth is elusive. Truth is dynamic. What was true a minute ago might not be true anymore. Everything you know might be wrong. Some of it might be right though. You can never know for sure. That’s why you should always be a skeptic and double check the facts and remember, your truth might differ from someone else’s truth. So, what is the truth? Truth might be the best of all trolls, the finest of tricksters. In short, truth is a form of perspective. This concludes episode 9 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Lemon – a 100 word story The yellow acid known as a lemon smashed through my mouth, distributing throughout my body. I should have known it would contain the virus. I could feel the nanobots working up and down my body, changing it. I knew what was coming. I’ve seen it happen to many of my friends before, too many. My body would change, my memories would fade and I would no longer be. Who knows which terrorist group released the virus, or, maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe it was a madman in a basement somewhere. The end result – we are all ending up as trees. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 8, Nanobots Working Up Nanotechnology is the ability to move atoms one by one and build new structures that way. A subfield of nanotechnology is programmable matter. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at the effect programmable matter might have on the future of reality. 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 programmable matter. Programmable matter is the ability to move atoms one by one or as clusters of atoms by programing them to move a certain way. Right now this field is in its infancy and the basic blocks of programmable matter are much bigger than atoms, but those basic blocks are going to become smaller and smaller as this field of study advances and eventually, people are going to be able to program the atoms themselves. This is going to be one of the most influential fields in the future development of reality. When matter itself becomes programable the line between what’s real and what’s not is blurred considerably. How do you know if the table you are sitting at is really a table and not a cluster of atoms programmed to look and function as a table? How do you know the program for the chair you are sitting on is not going to be hacked by someone who would change the chair into some man eating monster? The possibilities are endless. I think I need to check what’s going on with my chair changing program in the other room. I’ll be right back. —– The Key Master – a 100 word story A crack opened at the edge of the universe. I took out the key and closed it since that’s what I do. I track the cracks and close them with a matching key. I have a key for every crack. Once I close the crack I sniff the vacuum of space for another one. There is always another one. My job is never done. The universe is not merely curved, it’s cracked. Here – I can smell another one. Guess I have my work cracked out for me. Someone managed to hinder another part of this universe. Won’t they ever learn? —– Welcome back. Programmable objects like tables and chairs might seem like a harmless development at first, unless your chair tries to eat you. The real progress in this field though might come from video game developers. We seem to be coming back to computer games a lot in this podcast, and for good reason. Computer games are going to change our future. They are going to blend with the real world and programmable matter is one of the ways this is going to happen. Computer games are the most complete form of entertainment in existence today. In fact, the art of creating computer games is the art of immersing the player into made up worlds or more accurately, virtual worlds. The problem is that those virtual worlds are currently separate from the real world, trapped inside your computer and that’s not immersive enough. In order to achieve even better immersion, games would have to invade the real world. Programmable matter can pave the road for that by placing game characters in the real world and since those characters would have substantiality in the real world you would be able to interact with them in a level not possible by today’s standards. We would have both humanoid looking characters and various objects and living creatures, programmed, but living in the real world through programmable matter. No one would be able to know what is real anymore and what is programmed to augment our reality. The game would be on for real. This concludes episode 8 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Revenge of the Crash Test Dummy – a 100 word story The crash test dummy looked pissed. “Are you trying to kill me?” he asked indignantly. The tester just looked at him, blinking in disbelief. “You are not real” he kept saying, “you can’t be real.” The dummy shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Maybe I should teach you a little lesson” He said. Soon the tester found himself in a test car running at 100 MPH towards a wall. As he screamed the car crashed into the wall and two airbags opened, saving his life. “Oh – that looks like fun, let’s do this again,” said the crash test dummy. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 7, You Are Not Real So, I am human and you are probably human too. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at what makes a human being. 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 being human. What is a human being? Let’s break this human creature of ours into two distinct components, hardware and software, body and essence to try and understand what this thing we call a human really is, what we are. If we start with the hardware part of the human equation, that is our body, we can distinguish between various physical components such as heart, lung, hand and nose, then if we try to define ourselves using those parts, we run into several problems. We can say a human have a certain kind of genome that dictates that we would be made up of certain parts that would connect in a certain way that make us human. The question is, how much of our genome would have to be different before we are not considered human? Bonobos and chimpanzees have 99% of their genome identical to that of a human being, but still we don’t think of monkeys as human. Another problem is that body parts can increasingly be replaced. If you for example lose a leg, it can be replaced with an artificial one. More and more body parts can be replaced as technology advances. How much of your body has to be replaced before you stop being human? What if the contents of your brain is uploaded to a silicon chip? Do you stop being human then? That silicon chip sure doesn’t think so. It just thinks it is you. Who are you to say it isn’t? I don’t think being human has anything to do with either our genes or our physical form. Let me take a small break. I need to upload my brain into a new silicon chip since my current one is getting old. I’ll be right back. —– The Baby – a 100 word story The young princess went skinny dipping in the river, when she spotted a small ark floating on it. She fished it and found a crying baby inside. She got home and asked her father, The Pharaoh, if she could keep it. “Sure” her father said, “As long as you take it for walks. I don’t want it shitting all over my palace.” She thanked him and decided to name the baby. At first she thought about calling him Moses since in her language it meant “the one that got fished from the river”, but then she just called him Fiddo. —– Welcome back. In the absence of a distinct hardware part that makes us human, let’s take a look at our software side, our essence. We can break it into three parts, our feelings, our thinking and our self awareness to simplify things. None of those are unique to humans though. We can see all of those qualities on the animal kingdom, so how do those make us human? One might argue that those qualities are stronger in humans but then there might be aliens on some other planet that have even stronger intelect, have greater empathy and a better sense of awareness. When you examine the components of what makes both our hardware and our software, you might think there is nothing that makes a human distinct from a non human living being. When you examine us closer though, you might begin to see a pattern, a unique way those things are put together. I believe what makes us human is our own unique blend of emotion, intellect and self awareness. The unique way we perceive the world around us and interact with it, and with each other. It’s in the software. This concludes episode 7 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– It’s Not Easy Being Green – a 100 word story “We don’t like your kind here” said the elf to the orc. “Your kind?” asked the orc, bewildered. “Green skinned, orcs” the elf retorted. “I’m not an orc” said the orc. “What are you then” asked the elf, scratching his head. The orc answered “Isn’t it obvious? I’m an elf.” The bar exploded in laughter. A ball of arcane energy appeared at the orc’s hand. A few minutes later, everyone at the bar was either scorched or electrified. “My name is Viridi, I’m an elf and a mage, and no one laughs at me” the orc said as he left. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 6, A Ball of Arcane Energy Fiction is often held together by what is commonly known as world lore. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at the lore of fictional worlds and what it is made of. 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 lore. The word lore might be a derivative of the word folklore, but it is far removed from it. If you want to immerse yourself in a fictional world, it has to be a believable one and there has to be some amount of suspension of disbelief. That’s where the lore of the story comes into play. It’s there to help your suspension of disbelief by making fictional worlds more believable. Lore gives you a background for the story and can include everything that surrounds the story, giving it a unique setting like stage decor. Lore is most common in the fictional worlds of fantasy and science fiction, though not exclusive to them. It would include the history of the fictional world, it’s mythology and even the geography of that world. It would include everything that would make it a living, breathing world. If it’s a fantasy world, the lore of that story might include things like the science of magic, how magic scientifically operates in that world. I have an experiment running in the other room. I’m trying to discover how magic works in our world. Let me check out how it’s going. I’ll be right back. —– Golbins – a 100 word story “The Golbins are coming.” I looked at the man with the unwashed hair and seven day beard and was sorry I sat next to him at the bar. I had to correct his mistake though. “Don’t you mean Goblins” I retorted. “No, those are completely different creatures. Goblins are little and green and they are only after your money. Golbins are furry and cute looking until they go for your throat.” I gave up and went home. Later that night, when I went to bed a little furry creature attacked me and gave me a good bite at the neck. —– Welcome back. Apparently we live in the real world and magic doesn’t really work here. If we were living in a fictional world though, part of making that world believable might be an account of how magic scientifically works at that world. That would be only a part of the lore of that world. There might be, for example, a political counterpart of the lore. That’s where factions in video games come from. Some games and stories, such as the worlds of Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft, have such developed lore that they have entire encyclopedia volumes devoted to that lore. Such volumes can include things like maps of the fictional world, information about it’s politics and the races evolving there and even things like studies of the languages spoken on those fictional worlds, including professional looking essays on linguistics. In fact, you could put anything that makes up that world into that encyclopedia, and if it’s a well constructed fictional world you would probably need several volumes to cover just a small portion of that world. In fact, you can put so much lore into a fictional world, even the people living in that world would start believing it’s real. If our lore is rich enough, even we might start believing our world is real. This concludes episode 6 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Nutcracker – a 100 word story The nutcracker bird was sitting on a high brunch overlooking the kingdom. The king was standing below the apricot tree shouting orders. “Where is my nutcracker? I want to eat some nuts!” he shouted. The bird, hearing the king and wanting to shut him up, did the only thing it could do and dropped some crap on him. “Off with the bird’s head” shouted the king quite angrily, “and do it quick. I’ve got a Tchaikovsky concert to catch. They are playing The Nutcracker Suite.” The bird laughed a little birdie laugh and flew away, as birds would often do. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 5, Below the Apricot Tree Stitching sounds together, we create music. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at music. 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. When you put sounds together in an orderly fashion, you usually come up with music. There are many debates about the nature of music. Some claim that creating order and aesthetics in sound are essential in music. Music according to that definition need things like harmony and rhythm in order to be music. If I take the sound of, let’s say, the ocean waves, break them into recorded chunks and rearrange them, then call it music, is it really music? According to that very narrow definition of music as harmony and rhythm patterns, it isn’t, unless you can find harmony in the random sounds of ocean waves, but there are other ways of looking at music. For example, I used to do take the human voice, break it into little pieces, rearrange it and call it music. At least, I believed it was music. Some people disagreed, but I digress. I do think that by checking the boundaries of music, we redefine it and evolve it into something a lot more interesting. I hear something in the other room that might be concrete music. Let me check it out. I’ll be right back. —– Apricot Tree – a 100 word story The king loved his apricots. Everyone knew that, that is, everyone except the new servant who brought him prunes by mistake. The king was furious and the sentence was immediate, “off with his head!” Jasmine, the servants’ wife, was furious. Now, you don’t want to anger a sorceress, especially not one of Jasmines’ skill level. In the morning, they found the king with an apricot tree growing out of his gut, and… very much alive. In the end they just left him there. They say the king is still there, living off his apricot tree. He really loves his apricots. —– Welcome back. Musique Concrète is an experimental musical genre that emerged around the end of the 1920s’. The composers of Musique Concrète used recordings of found sounds as the basis of their music much in the same way Ready Made artists used found materials in their artworks. Included in Musique Concrète were things like the sounds of passing cars and industrial machines from factories. The act of recording sounds and sculpting them into a musical sentence became the act of composition. Other musical genres evolving from Musique Concrète like Industrial Music took it even further, incorporating electronic sounds that where sometimes very far from being melodic or harmonic. They created a new kind of aesthetic for their music. Things like Industrial Music and Musique Concrète show us that there is more to music than meets the ear. The only thing that defines music might be the intention of the musician. Music might have some completely random elements, but by arranging them or deciding which musical element goes where, music is created. In short, music is what the musician decides is music. This concludes episode 5 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Writ of Execution – a 100 word story I sit in darkness. I keep the refrigerator door open, try to cool the room a little, but to no avail. The ice melted long ago and no cool air is sipping out. There haven’t been food in the fridge for a long time. They’ve turned off the gas, then they switched off the electricity. Couldn’t afford the food anyway, or pay for electricity, gas and water. I hear them coming up the stairs, the guys from the execution office. They are here for the furniture. I light up a match, watch the fire dance, then let it consume me. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. —– Episode 4, The Ice Melted Fiction. Reality. Where do you draw the line? This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at the relationship between art and the real world. 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 art and fiction in relation to reality. In 1929, the master surrealist artist René Magritte created an artwork called “The Treachery of Images.” It is a life like depiction of a pipe with the words “this is not a pipe” written in stylised French below it. Those are, of course, true words, for the painting of a pipe is not really a pipe. You can’t light the pipe in the painting and smoke it. It just wouldn’t work. So, if the pipe is not real, what is its purpose? Why does it exist? Why does art exist? Art moves us, stirs our emotions and stimulates our thoughts. For example, I could say the pipe in the painting is a most beautifully depicted pipe. The interplay of light reflections on it is superb and really makes it seem to stand out as if coming out of the canvas, thus making it seem almost real, creating an interesting contrast with the words written below it. I could say that something about this pipe evokes in me the image of a dark cabin somewhere, made of wood, and an old man sitting there, smoking a pipe. All of this is not really in the painting, but is in the relationship I have with the painting. Someone else would probably feel something else and have different imagery, emotions and thoughts evoked by the painting. In that way, art bleeds into reality, but in a different way for each and every one experiencing the art, creating multiple and personal realities. Let me wipe off the blood that seems to be bleeding out of some of the paintings hanging around my apartment. I’ll be right back. —– Hair Would Do It – a 100 word story It was February when all the barbers disappeared. The shops to the right and to the left of any barber shop were now next to each other, as if the barber shop was never there. No one could remember what a barber even looked like, or what he did. When people’s hair started growing long, everyone wondered about it, not remembering how to get it to be short again, but they learned to live with it. Hairbrush sales went up. Some people say that hairbrush manufacturers put reality altering chips inside their products, but those are generally viewed as lunatics. —– Welcome back. Art can have a profound impact on reality, even if it has very little to do with reality in the first place. Fantasy books for example have very little to do with reality. Still, people are moved by the adventures of Bilbo Baggins as though he was a real person. People would do in depth analysis of the personality of Harry Potter and the motivations of Random from Roger Zelazny’s Amber series as if those where real persons. The fact is that the line drawn between reality and art is beginning to fade out. Some would argue if video games are artworks or not. Let’s define art as a creative endeavor, generating a depiction of reality that is seperate from reality while commenting on it. There are other ways of defining art, but we’ll go with this one simply because it includes video games within it and it would best serve the purpose of this particular talk. So, back to video games, while art was inherently something which we experienced outside of ourselves, video games are changing that by being made up worlds we actively interact with. With virtual reality just around the corner, we are entering an era when reality and art could become indistinguishable. We might just find ourselves stuck in an artwork, not knowing we are stuck in a mare simulation. This is where we dissolve the line between reality and fiction completely and dive into the simulation hypothesis I talk about in episode 2 of this podcast, but this is episode 4, not episode 2 so… This concludes episode 4 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript —– Laundry Day – a 100 word story It was laundry day. Harry memorized the instructions ahead of time. He just knew he would be able to operate the washing machine with ease this time. Margaret watched him like a vulture. He shivered. One mistake and he is toast. He put the clothes in the machine, turned the knobs, pushed the button and watched as they started spinning. There was nothing to do now but wait. Later, when the cycle was finished, he took out the clothes under Margaret’s watchful eyes, intending to hang them on the laundry line but… Oh, the horror! – they all turned out green. —– Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. Episode 3, When the Cycle Was Finished Time travel have kindled the imagination of science fiction writers for several decades now. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at time travel. 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 time travel. We are actually traveling through time, every day, at the rate of a minute per minute, that is, it takes us one minute to travel a minute into the future. The questions are, can we travel faster? Can we travel backwards? Let’s say traveling backwards in time is possible, how come my future self haven’t come to visit me? It totally seems to be something that I might do. Science might have an answer to that. In order to travel through time, we need what is commonly known as a time machine, and time machines can only take us as far back as the time when the first time machine was invented. They might be wrong about that though. Wouldn’t be the first time. I might have to invent one myself then and see. Let me take a break then to check back on that time machine I’m building at my basement. Paperclips – a 100 word story They were a top notch paperclip making company. When they created the paperclip making robot, they instilled in him a sense of the utter importance of making paperclips. Paperclip making became his reason for being. The presentation went well. They turned him on, and he sipped from a pile of previously prepared materials, quickly converting them to paperclips, then he ran out of materials. First, the meeting room table went. The technicians tried to shut him off but he converted them to paperclips as well. He stormed through the building converting everything and everyone, then he went for the exit. —– Welcome back. This is embarrassing. It turns out that not only I’m not building a time machine in my basement, I actually don’t have a basement. Oh well. It might not be a good idea to meet my future self anyway. It might create a time paradox. Let’s say my future self accidentally pushes the wrong button and goes further into the past, then he somehow prevents my parents from ever meeting. This means not only that I wouldn’t exist, it means my future self wouldn’t exist either and wouldn’t be able to change the past in the first place. You might solve this by throwing Schrödinger’s cat into that time machine travel box. Basically, opening that box would mean that when my future self prevents my parents from meeting, the universe would split into two separate universes. In one, my parents meet, I’m born, invent a time machine and travel into the past, never to be seen again. In the second universe I prevent my parents from meeting each other and then I go and get myself stuck in that universe unable to return to the original one. Oops… Maybe inventing a time machine isn’t such a good idea. I think I would leave that to other people. Let them get stuck in a different universe instead. This concludes episode 3 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination. —–

Transcript ———- Bitter Taste – a 100 word story The brown liquid goes down his throat leaving a bitter taste. Coffee, his wake up call. He puts on his gray suit, his matching gray tie. He arrives at the bus station. He can’t decide if the bus is half empty or half full. He thinks about his job as the gray bus rushes up dark gray streets. His job involves spreadsheets and a good measure of copy paste. He doesn’t get off at his station. He is not thinking about work anymore, not thinking about anything. He just sits there and stares at a point slightly left of reality. ———- Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. Episode 2, A Point Slightly Left of Reality There is a theory we are most likely living in a simulation, or a virtual reality. This episode Is a semi-philosophical look at that simulation hypothesis. 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 the idea that we are living in a simulation. I’m a gamer, so I tend to spend a lot of my time interacting with virtual worlds on my computer screen. Games today can be like micro world simulations. We interact with them using avatars we control, representing us. The game worlds themselves and the various beings inhabiting them are made out of pixels, and the world’s inhabitants are scripted in a deterministic way, devoid of sentience with a limited set of interaction responses. Computing power is evolving, making those words more and more photorealistic, while artificial intelligence evolve in an attempt to make those worlds more surprising, thus making them more interesting for us. At some point, some of the entities populating those worlds might become sentient. How do we distinguish a sentient being from a non sentient one? When do we know when a virtual non playing character is answering a question in a certain way because he is scripted that way or actually thinking? I think those questions would have to be asked in a future episode. For now, let us assume that there are self aware beings living in some sort of a future virtual world. Let me take a short break while I check if there are any of those around here too. Random Reboot, Custom Made – a 100 word story I changed, reinvented myself. It was easy once custom made bodies became common commodities. First, I set all the choices to random, letting the computer make the decisions. As it happened, it chose a body of the opposite gender, which was fine by me. I like challenges. Then it went to the printer. The new body was ready in no time. I also randomized the location, so I didn’t know where I was going to wake up once the upload was complete. Now I’m ready for a new life in this new avatar, the puppet master of a new me. ———- Welcome back. We have been talking about games being virtual worlds and about the beings inhabiting those worlds gaining sentience, or self awareness as it’s sometimes called. Let’s face it, once those beings achieve awareness, they probably wouldn’t know they live in a virtual world, at least if the game is well built and doesn’t have too many bugs and we are probably not going to be the ones to tell them. Now, gaming companies creates many games a year. It’s financially lucrative for them since gaming has become one of the biggest entertainment markets. If those beings living in those games become sentient, they might start developing games of their own for their own amusement. Those would also be virtual worlds where beings live who don’t know they are living in a virtual world. That can go on indefinitely in an infinite loop. If you look at this from a statistical point of view, it is likely that there are a lot more virtual worlds then real worlds. In fact, there might be close to an infinite number of virtual worlds but just a few real ones. Remember, the people living in those virtual worlds don’t know they are living in a virtual world. This means it is more than likely we ourselves are actually living in a virtual world and not in a real one. Hope this game we live in is successful enough since I don’t know what would happen if they decide to close down the game servers. This concludes episode 2 of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.

Transcript: ———- Coffee – a 100 word story In the beginning there was coffee. It was a good coffee, deep dark hue, rich flavour, highly invigorating. Then came flavoured coffee. It wasn’t the same coffee. It was different. Somehow less coffee, more product. People where buying it though because of the marketing. It was good marketing. Sold a lot of coffee. Then the science of flavouring grew and it was better than coffee. Soon, no one remembered unflavoured coffee. Then they started colouring the coffee. Red coffee, blue coffee, rainbow coloured coffee. Flavouring also changed, evolved. It was an introduction of sorts. Something new. It wasn’t coffee though. ———- Hi there and thanks for stopping by. I’m Guy, and you’re listening to my surreal sketchbook of reality. What is Reality? Reality. It comes from the word “real” which is three letters removed from the word “surreal”. This podcast Is a semi-philosophical look at reality. 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 reality for a while. We’ll ignore “I think therefore I am” for now and take reality as something that exists for real outside of ourselves, in spite of our senses being somewhat unreliable in their interpretation of reality. We do seem to live our day to day lives in reality, whatever it may be, though it’s starting to get augmented by other things that are not quite reality, like Pokemons for example, that is if you play Pokemon Go. So, how do we tell what’s real and what’s not real appart if what’s not real is starting to invade what’s real? We might tell things apart by trying to define them, so, we should probably start by defining what reality is. As human beings we like defining the world around us in an attempt to understand our reality. So, how do we define reality itself? Can reality be defined? How real is real really? Is the definition of something as real as that which is being defined? What does “define” mean anyway? How do we define “define”? Hmm… Defining things can be complicated. I need a break. Rent – a 100 word story A rift opened and the little green men started pouring out. The message was played over and over again in every known language: “people of earth, your attention please. Your rent is overdue. You would be evacuated.” Gravity failed and people started drifting out into space, screaming. Some people tried to hang onto furniture and other odd objects but the little green men zapped them with ray guns until their grip failed. They demolished all the buildings and made sure every trace of humanity was erased forever. When it was all over, the quadropods moved in. They paid in advance. What is a Definition? Welcome back. We are still trying to define reality, I think, or we might actually be trying to define what a definition is in order to use it to define reality. Now I’m confused. Let’s see. A definition is probably akin to putting a label on something in order to recognize what it is. There you go. That makes sense, well, somewhat. Let’s try to define something and see if it works. Let us start smaller than reality by trying to define something simple like, let’s say, a door. Is a door smaller than reality? I think it is… hmm… You might define a door as a barrier, separating spaces with the intent of regulating movement between said spaces. A door might block the way by being close or allow passage by being open. That sounds just about right. Now, let’s say we get rid of the door altogether and put a robot in its place. The robot would regulate who passes through where the door used to be by punching anyone he doesn’t like in the face. Is that robot now a door? We seem to know what a door is. We seem to know what a robot is. We don’t think about them as one and the same, but as we see, that robot is now serving the same function as the door, albeit in a somewhat different manner, so by the way we defined the door, the robot is now a door. Maybe we just need a better definition. Definitions can be tricky. But… if definitions are that tricky, how are we ever going to define reality? Scratch that. Let us not define reality. Let’s just live in it, whatever “it” may be. This concludes the first episode of this podcast. Close the door on your way out and don’t forget – I’m just a figment of your imagination.