Welcome to Stories From a Better World
“What the hell happened to the world while I was away?”
“Memories. You’re talking about memories.”
-Rick Deckard to Elden Tyrell in the ever more relevant classic, Bladerunner
In one of Bladerunner’s most underrated scenes, Rick Deckard is talking with Elden Tyrell about what makes the Tyrell Corporation’s new Nexus Six replicant “model” almost indistinguishable from real humans. Tyrell says, “We began to recognize in them a strange obsession. After all, they are emotionally inexperienced, with only a few years in which to store up the experiences which you and I take for granted. If we gift them with a past, we create a cushion or a pillow for their emotions, and consequently, we can control them better.”
That’s the moment Deckard suddenly recognizes the singular, profound difference between humans and what we now call Artificial Intelligence, “AI.” Memories. Memories intertwined with emotion.
Memories are the building blocks of our stories. Stories are the currency of our lives. Without stories we have no existence, no connection, no meaning. We’re just soulless computers humming along in perpetuity, processing data with no past, no present, no future, no emotion.
My name is John Alanis and I’m not a computer. I’m a Certified Sommelier, and I remember the world as it was. I was born in 1971, graduated from High School in San Antonio, Texas in 1989, and from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994. I vividly remember that world. I left it for a long time. And when I came back, it was gone. All that’s left now are stories about that world, stories I lived.
From 1996 until 2020 I had a great direct marketing business—I sat behind my computer and turned electrons into money from home. When I went out into the world, it was during “off hours.” I went to the gym at noon, went to the grocery store at 2 pm on weekdays. I traveled a lot and went to events in different cities, but it was with people like me, “money magicians” who stayed behind our computers and made money without the bother of going out into the real world. We all thought the world would carry on as we had known it, prior to the internet, prior to smart phones, prior to social media. We were so smart, and we were so wrong. Our world didn’t just change. It died.
In 2020, two things happened. Business from behind the computer got hard, and I got seduced by fine wine. I decided to get serious about getting into the wine market, so in 2023 I got a job working retail in wine at a regional grocery store here in Georgetown, Texas (just North of Austin). I also started studying for the Certified Sommelier Exam. It was my first true re-entry into the “real world” since 1996, my first time seeing the public on an every day, 8 hour a day basis.
It was shocking to me in a way I can still barely describe. Everything I knew, everything I remembered, everything I’d felt was gone. Long gone. It was like walking over the remnants of a once great civilization, barely recognizing a few relics and artifacts, while not recognizing anything else.
In the world I remember, the world I lived in, we had great music, great movies, real conversations, and most importantly real friends. We had real connections. I remember people- especially women- were lean, slender, and well dressed, with a look of exuberance on their face- look back at any nostalgia site from the 70’s, 80’s, or 90’s, you’ll see that look. It doesn’t exist anymore.
Most of all, I remember a world where we had culture, a collective identity, shared experiences. We had real emotions, both up and down. But mostly up.
Today everyone is dull and listless. Their eyes are hollow. They are obese. Ill dressed. Garishly tattooed from head to foot. They shuffle around like unshaven zombies in sandals. They are emotionless. And they have forgotten the world as it was, if they were there. What was once human is now less than a replicant. It’s not even that people don’t care. They don’t even know they should.
There is no good new music today, only the past. There are no good new movies today, only the past. There is no real conversation or connection, just phony interaction via soulless “social media” and mindless texting, machines communicating with machines, watched by machines. People are afraid to speak their minds, afraid to say how they really feel, if they can feel anything at all. Culture of any sort has disappeared completely- some might say eradicated.
The saddest thing to me is there are no more real stories. No one does anything anymore. There are no more “Good Ole Boys,” great characters getting up to no good for the rest of us to laugh at. The world I knew- we knew- is gone forever, and it’s not coming back. It was a much better world than the rubble we step over today, and that’s not nostalgia, sentimentality, or pining for lost youth. It’s an objective fact.
For a few of us however, all, is not lost.
We still have our memories, and if we have our memories, we have our stories. And if we have our stories, we can create our own worlds. Yes, they will be smaller, and they will never be as good as the world we had…but they can be really, really good. We don’t have to live in the rubble of today’s world, we can step outside of it and create our own world with the stories from our past.
I’m inviting you to join me in creating our own new world with stories from my old one, Stories From a Better World.
I have a lot of great memories and even better stories, happy ones, a few sad ones, and most importantly, hilarious ones. When you read my stories from growing up in the 70’s, being a teenager in the 80’s, and going to college in the early 90’s, they will start to bring back memories of your own, then stories of your own. You’ll begin to remember life as it was, and how it can be again. And you will begin to appreciate the scope of what we’ve lost.
Here’s the deal:
I’ll send you (at least) one free story here on Substack a week, maybe more if the mood strikes. If you upgrade to paid, I’ll also send you a much longer one every other week, PLUS I’ll teach you how to tell write and tell stories in that same episode. When I said “stories are the currency of our lives,” I mean that in the strictest sense. If you can tell stories, you can attract the right people, the right things, and the right compensation into your life. If you can’t tell stories, you’re not going to attract anything.
There is no better time than now to learn and hone the skill of story writing and story telling. People are literally crying out for something true, something real, something authentic. They want to get back to the world we had, and if you can give them a taste of that, if you can make them feel again, you can write your own ticket. Everyone wants to be around someone who is a great storyteller.
I mentioned earlier I am now a Certified Sommelier, so every episode will come with an excellent wine or fine whiskey recommendation. Nothing goes better with great stories than great wine or whisky. Heck, that’s the reason I got into wine in the first place- every great bottle has a story to tell, and it takes you places no other beverage can. It’s a great addition to creating the world you want to live in with the people you want to be with.
If you become a paid member, you also become part of a community of like minded people who remember the world the way I do, and all of us together will bring back memories for each other. I don’t know how many times I’ve scrolled through comments of a song I just remembered, only to be reminded of something else by an offhand comment someone made.
Remember “The Rodeo Song?” Probably not, but some of you will remember the opening line, “Well, it’s 40 below, and I don’t give a fuck, got a heater in my truck, and I’m off to the rodeo.” When I looked up that song on YouTube, one of the commenters mentioned hearing it on the Dr. Demento Show.
Dr. Demento. Wow. I’d completely forgotten about Dr. Demento, but I suddenly had a memory of tuning into AM radio on a Saturday morning in El Paso, Texas circa 1981 or 82, to listen to Dr. Demento and hope he played the Purple People Eater. See how that works? I’d completely forgotten about something I’d loved, and suddenly 43 years later it comes rushing back…and makes me laugh. It makes me feel again. It’s part of my life story I’d forgotten and now have back. As an aside, I was very happy to see Dr. Demento is still going strong at 83 years old as I write this.
So let’s get started. No matter your age, let’s rebuild our world together, a world built on collective memories and stories from a better world as we remember it. Share your memories with me and others in the comments. Sign up now, and let’s get started!
