Blog Post of the Week #1: The Incident

By:
Dillon Wheeler


***Note*** After multiple attempts at fixing the odd spacing and font sizes later on in this post. I have, effectively. Given up.

Okay well, I had planned for a Monday blog update, but, well you know good ol’ procrastinator me, and look at the bright side, TWOSday is twice as good! I didn’t get around to it Monday, Sorry but, I do have a good one for you today though! Awesome! Even comes with an original picture of my hero I took today! How about that!

Tuesday, November 30, 2010 4:17 PM GMT -0800

It begins.

You may ask what begins exactly. I get it, perfectly logical question, so I will tell you. First though, let me fill you in on a bit of the backstory.

I had just finished my last lab for my Earth and Atmospheric Sciences course, hurray! I know, great right? So completed it was, this by the way was around about 4:00 PM. So I finished up, said some goodbyes, thanked the teachers, and left. I made my way towards the subway system, like usual, you know? I got on the train, it was full so I was forced to stand up, no big deal. 

So here I am, standing up, moving along underground. I do the logical thing, put my headphones on and start listening to music, you know, it’s a long ride, over twenty minutes with sweaty people.

And so it begins.

4:17 and all is fine. Songs are playing, emotions are at a high, excitement even higher, stress low.

Then, a familiar song plays. 

“Times Like These” by the Foo Fighters. 

I hadn’t heard the song in a very long time, so okay, I go along with it, I like the instrumental intro.

Then it happens, now to preserve what happened and display the truth, I will repeat what I had wrote during the events. Word for word consecutively, no edits. 

#1

“Either I have been drugged, or something is not right with reality, this is definitely not normal, wow.”

I wait it out a bit, not too sure of what is happening.

#2

“I can’t be sure if what I was hearing was real, but how could it not be?

Still confused myself, I let it continue.

#3

“The music is repeating itself and playing backwards, with heavy static and stuff, I can’t explain it and I can’t be sure of anything, I do not know what the (expletive) is happening, but I do not it can not be something to do with my iPhone.

Now, In reality, It could have definitely been my iPhone, which is less than two months old and such an incident has never occurred prior.

I begin to reason at this point.

#4

And before I blame it solely on myself, maybe some paranormal interference (expletive) stuff up, like influenced the sound waves.

What I mean, is an external force. Unseen.

#5

I’ve replayed the song over and over and it is seemingly random occurrences, I can not make a conclusion to anything other than that I am being (expletive) with.

Then, After the ordeal, I recap the entire incident, in an attempt to make more sense to myself and others.

#6

So to recap - playing in reverse, heavy static, repeating one part perfectly, high pitched ringing noise, distorted voice/instruments.

All of which seemingly occurred at random, sometimes together, sometimes singular

Upon numerous replays, it has now ceased completely, with the exception of the occasional ringing,

My theory - I have no (expletive) idea what just happened, visual input remain changed throughout, it was only the auditory senses “misinterpreting?” what was happening.

So there you go, unedited (except for curse words of course), raw information, I myself, documented during and after the incident.

Still confused? Well, I was on the train, listening to music, when all of a sudden, it would repeat itself. 

Yes, the song would repeat a part I had just heard. 

What did I do? The logical thing, I took my iPhone out, inspected it, played with the headphones, then restarted the song. 

All was good.

Then boom, the good ol’ chap Dave Grohl, lead singer of the Foo Fighters would you know, deepen his voice, to oh let’s say, to Demon levels? Yeah thats right, It sounded like Lucifer himself was telling me that “It’s times like these where we learn to live again”. I KNOW, FREAKY!

Quickly, I unsheathed my iPhone from the constraints of my pocket, and checked it once again, nothing out of the ordinary, so I did the natural thing to do, restarted it once again!

This time, however unreal it may sound, I got to the point where Dave Grohl says his first word, I believe it is “I”, and completes the sentence. At which point, the lines started to play backwards. Now I can write backwards, idk, I guess, fluently? Not sure if that is the correct term, but I can do it. So, during my courses of writing backwards, I am able to recognize words being played backwards.

Okay, thats complete bogus, everyone can recognize a song being played backwards, just thought it sounded better throwing that in lol.

So it plays backwards, but that is not all, there is heavy, heavy, and I repeat! Heavy! Static in the background, I quickly checked the headphones once again, nothing. I wiggled the chord, no homo, and it did not change whatsoever, still extremely static-y.

At this point, I began writing the notes you read earlier.

I repeated the song multiple times over. Again producing variations between the distortions. Then at once, it stopped. Completely. Shoe-Bam Done. Yes, I create my own sayings. 

So, now we get to the good stuff. The juicy part. I have a few theories as to why this has happened. Let me start off with oh I don’t know, the most basic of them.

1. My iPhone

Now, everyone knows how Apple is, their products are designed, displayed and portrayed (rhyme please) to be flawless, perfect, redundant, beautiful pieces of technology. If they weren’t made of special alloys and glass you would probably eat them, or at least, you know, take a little nibble. I mean, how could you not? They are beautiful! 

As beautiful as one device can be. Those devices can fail. Perhaps it was a glitch in the system. A re-occurring bug, destroying my music experience. I don’t know. Seems the most logical.


2. Me, Myself, and I

Not the terrible song by some pop musician, I really mean myself on this one. I will admit, it is possible I was “hearing” things, and trying to interpret things as I would like have to believed them as being, but really were not. The Human Mind is a complex being. Not even itself can understand well, itself. 

Moving on.

3. The train and/or being underground

Getting slightly less logical here, but there is a chance of this. Perhaps, while being underground, there were some sort of signals being sent around, that interfered with my iPhone? It being solid concrete and all the signals would bounce easily enough and the train could have acted as a sort of receiver. Or, maybe it was the train itself emitting these signals?

4. Aliens

Yay! Aliens! Logical, no. Fun to talk about and ponder, yes! Maybe Aliens, have some sort, well okay, for sure they do. Maybe Aliens had decided that they did not want me listening to music, or thought they would send a message and began toying with me. Okay, please don’t stop reading. It was just a joke!!!

5. Brain Signals

Never count out the brain baby. That beast is capable of anything. You know there are toys out now that use brain signals to operate a fan and move a ball up in the air? The more strong-minded you are, the higher the ball! So, perhaps in all my subconscious glory, I had unknowingly messed with the signals. Distorting the information. Curious thoughts George.

6. Drugs

Though I had not taken any, or consumed anything, without my knowledge of course. Maybe I was somehow injected, or breathed in a psychoactive drug?

7. Reality itself

Maybe, just maybe reality is all subjective. Maybe the music I was hearing, was not music but the product of my mind? Perhaps, we are all being controlled, a la The Matrix and there was an error made, distorting the musical goodness I was receiving. Idk. What I do know though, is that if a very large African American confronts me, and tells me to take a pill from one of his hands, I am running as far away as fast as I can, thats how real nightmares begin, well, doesn’t have to be an African American, could be just plain African. No, I am just kidding. Some people from all races are a little deranged, there we go, diversity!

Okay, so in conclusion, maybe I don’t know what it was, I threw those possibilities out there. No doubt it could have been something else that I did not mention. If you have any ideas or have experienced the same thing, please, don’t hesitate to let me know. Until then I think I’ll go with the Alien theory, That way I can have some fun as I get to wear a tinfoil hat and sit in front of a television watching static! Oh joy...

Thanks,

Dillon Wheeler