Zombie HORROR!!
Yesterday, of course, was ‘blog like it’s the end of the world’ day. Several people I know were caught a bit off guard, especially when reading the better-written entries. I’m interested that most of the zombiepocalypse bloggers posted as if they expected to survive all this, and with convincing feeling rather than easy melodrama. Frankly, this was more fun than NaNoWriMo as far as I’m concerned.
But I wrote in mine about ‘going mad’ with the shock of what’s happening. I tried to imagine the other day a horrific event that would ‘drive me mad’. There’s not a lot I can imagine – I mean, I can imagine being terrified, sickened, appalled, but not driven insane by an event. The very sight of Cthulhu was supposed to do this, or the reading of his forbidden books; but I suspect that had more to do with the awful realization that such things could exist in a universe of which we’d pridefully assumed we were the supreme center.
Last week I read about a story involving a 100-foot-long house with a 110-foot-long hallway inside!!! For a while, i thought that might be my road – how would my scientific, skeptical mind embrace this physical impossibility? It might DRIVE ME MAD!
But maybe not. I have a built-in error-protection routine for these situations, which is to simply say “There’s something going on here that I don’t understand.” If I “know” that you can’t fit 110 feet of corridor in 100 feet of domicile, but I am forced by the evidence of my own measuring tape to concede that that’s what seems to be happening, I don’t need to shriek “That’s IMPOSSIBLE!” and run from the building, I need only admit that I can’t explain this, and start looking for answers.
A zombie can scare me, might consume me, but can’t make me admit there isn’t an explanation somewhere 🙂
The End of the World
I’ve got to write something about the Uprising. I’ve got to keep my head or it’s all lost. Everything may be lost anyway, but if I freak out, then everything’s definitely over for me.
I’ve never been able to get into a zombie movie… I know too much biology. Well, I’m in one now, and I’ve got to keep my mind occupied. How are their muscles moving without a blood supply? How can they have a blood supply with an unbeating heart? Their tissues are rotting, their bones are crumbling – how can they move at all?
Okay… their bones are holding them up, and their muscles are producing force. Something has repaired them at least that well. Niven suggested a strange symbiotic plague in “Night on Mispec Moor”, but why would they rise from the grave all at once if there were various plague infections?
Evil spirits? The Devil’s work? Angry ancient voodoo houngans? As near as I can find out – the cable channels aren’t much use right now – the risen are impartial in their attacks. If this is an act of revenge, it’s on all humanity.
This is what I know. This is coordinated by someone or something with the power to make rotten human tissue functional again.
—–
I may go mad, but I’m physically okay right now. They moved us all from the NASA side to the Air Force side as soon as possible, and well-armed soldiers are proving effective for the moment. I can’t contact anyone else… land lines are clogged, cell lines are clogged, and e-mails / IMs to my friends and family seem to be going to /dev/null. I will check my Friends page again shortly to see if anyone’s blogged about this.
Feeling a little like Dr. Clayton Forrester right now – trapped in the research lab while the destroyers of humanity knock on the door, and the refugee hordes demand what few resources we have. Perhaps the common cold will save us as well. I’m not sure what else will.
What the hell could be behind this?
Not deja vu, thankfully
At least this time, when the tire went flat on the interstate, I maintained control; babied it to a gas station; discovered that the gas station had an attached tire center; found that the tire folks could see me immediately; and learned that the only problem was a bad valve stem, which cost me less than $20 to replace.
This one worked out a LOT better than getting a hip replacement. I’m still rattling from the adrenaline, though.
“Pro-ceedin’!”
Those that play computer games should wander over to http://www.blizzard.com today. Seriously.
It’s sort of embarrassing to know that someone’s sold me a game before the thing’s even finished. But that’s the truth, and so it goes. The CGI trailers are AMAZING. I don’t know why Blizz is talking about shooting the WoW movie in live action, their CGI people should be winning awards right and left.
If there’s anything that company does well, it’s detail. The level of polish in their website, trailers, and their actual games are amazing. None of that would help if there was no solid foundation, but that’s been taken care of too. Of course, simultaneous Mac releases are also a plus for me 🙂
“Hell. It’s about time.”
Are you Experienced?
Just came back from a very nice dinner with raininva at Red Robin. She gave me some loot from Vegas’ Star Trek: The Experience – a Starfleet emblem and an isolinear chip keychain.
Rain just got promoted, and is apparently being groomed for bigger things in the future. I’d be jealous, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m quite pleased with my new job 🙂
Quack
There were ducks napping right outside my front door last night when I got home. This makes me happy. I like ducks.
The Leiji Matsumoto fans on my flist (I know there are a couple) really need to check out this iTunes link… Look! More cool-looking TV I don’t have time to watch!
Wish I could make the Yeager Anniversary picnic this weekend. There are real disadvantages to living 5 hours’ drive away from the fandoms I grew up in. I do feel like I made a modest contribution to the history of the chapter, and I’d love to see everyone again, but it’s not to be this time. Hope everyone has a great time!
Monday morning musing
This morning, I stared into the shaving mirror while performing my daily skin irritation ritual, and remembered someone at Technicon referring to me as one of the con’s “elder statesmen”. I enjoyed the compliment… but it’s still a little weird trying to think of myself that way.
Didn’t get to stay in bed any later than 9:30 or so this weekend – too much to do! Happy weekend, though. We were celebrating Starr’s graduation from nursing school at the top of her class! I think that excellent things are ahead for her.
My Dad drove up to see me yesterday, and I’m planning to go see my Mom and my sister before long this summer. There’s been a bit of distance, because of how wrapped-up I’ve been in myself lately, and I’m really looking forward to re-connecting with them all this year.
The living-room TV’s flipped its power supply, and we’re down to watching Good Eats on a 12″ portable we had in the bedroom. I was looking at getting an AppleTV in a few weeks, but I suspect I’ll be putting that off a bit. One of the reasons I’m so far behind on my TV watching is that a lot of it’s on the computer, and I just don’t think of my desktop Mac as a media center – more of a creativity, communications, and gaming support device. TV programs are for relaxing in the living room – so, really, that makes me a perfect AppleTV customer. (Another reason I’m behind is that I usually have much better things to do than television. Even really good television. I’m almost to the point of cutting things I like from the DVR schedule that I know I just won’t get around to watching. People keep saying things like “you should start watching Heroes!” and I look at my backlog and think “yeah… next year maybe!”)
Dave S. will be running his Marvel Super Heroes game tonight. I haven’t been able to attend since March, and I can’t wait to catch up with everyone. For the last sessions, I’d had to finish at work and fly right over to arrive fashionably late; with my new schedule I can take it a little easier.
My outlook’s not too bad for a Monday morning.
Safety first, Robin
The lever-operated aluminum can crusher over the recycling bin in our break room is solemnly marked:
“Do not place small woodland creatures in can crusher.”
Good advice, I’m sure.
For a Foggy Morning
This morning, I discovered that the video drivers for my eyeballs must have gone bad. My view distance was cut to around 30 yards, with everything farther cloaked in thick white fog. Perhaps I needed a patch – Sunlight 3.4?
Seriously, the fog this morning gave my commute a truly surreal ambience. Once I’d travelled a third of the way onto the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel, all I could see was a short stretch of driving surface before and aft, with nothing but unfinished whiteness all around. I was driving from nothing into nothing – it might have been a visual metaphor to describe some kind of magical or high-tech transit. Perhaps this morning I was dropped into a parallel universe with all my memories instantly edited to make me believe that I’d always lived in a world where the Allies won World War II, and Earth had a single moon.
Perhaps it takes me a really long time to wake up in the morning.
