Monday, April 30, 2007

Zombies!

If there is one thing I know, it's Zombies. Zombie Survival Guide? I scoff at that book. You want to survive a Zombie Apocalypse? You will do as I say and you may just live to tell the tale.

Of course that's based on the theory your zombie apocalypse scenario has an ending. Most zombie apocalypses(apcalypsi?) are end of all things kind of zombie scenarios. George A. Romero's great epic Living Dead series presents that the world is so overrun with zombies and all who die, not just from being bit, rise again. That kinda puts into perspective that life is over and there's no chance for a tomorrow.

But first we have to establish the basics to survive a zombie scenario. We have to figure out which category it fits into, or rather what kind of zombie are we dealing with. Now, for a zombie apocalypse, it would have to be the living dead not a mindless, voodoo controlled, being. I'm fairly sure we can get past living zombies with ease compared to the undead. Now when presented with a zombie apocalypse, I ask myself the following questions:

1. What category of Zombie attack is this? What begat the zombie plague you are facing?
  • Biological - A virus or some other biological means that has made the dead rise, and spreads a contagion that converts living tissue into zombie. Also included in this would be radiation affecting the biology of a living person turning them into a zombie.
  • Chemical - A chemical compound has reanimated flesh, and even the seperation of the brain will not stop the body from functioning as it is reanimated not alive.
  • Metaphysical - No explaination can be found. Death has simply stopped caring and sent everyone back. Perhaps the afterlife is full, perhaps an evil spirit in the woods has awakened, or maybe God just hates you. Either way, the dead are just rising and killing. Now, metaphysical just rising dead can also just rise and not be psychotic killers but rather just regular joes, but the more the brain has decayed the more likely it is they will kill.

2. How do you kill your zombie? To survive you will have to kill at least one.

  • Brain Death - "Just shoot them in the head" Any kind of injury to the brain or spinal cord will have the same effect it will on a normal person. Body goes down without any functions.
  • Full Body Death - The brain is gone, head is gone, spines broken, the flesh is still alive. You may just have to completely dismember the corpse or burn it. But with burning you risk the contamination of zombie ashes.
  • Rare but always possible "Just shoot them" death - The reanimated corpse can be killed as easily as the first time it died. No special means, heck you could choke the sucker out.

3. How does the future look? Is there a chance for a return to normality?

  • Biological - In the biological category, a cure is usually possible. A gene may exist in some people that prevents the viral agent from taking over or perhaps the virus is only temporary and the immune system can kick it out. Maybe the zombie can starve to death? Maybe chemo works? In the biological case, it's usually a good chance for normality to return if you survive.
  • Chemical - This too generally has a cure or at least an antithesis to the first chemical. A way to break down whatever has reanimated the dead. But many times it's likely whomever invented the reanimation reagent dies before they figure out the antidote.
  • Metaphysical - This is tricky. Depending on what metaphysical manner has risen the dead, you have a chance or you might as well just give up. Evil spirits? Containable. Afterlife's full and the dead are just walking around with nowhere to go? Managable. Dead just rising? Might want to just hide out on an island until you die of old age.

Also always take into consideration wether or not animals are rising too. If a mosquito is a zombie then you're probably screwed.

Now once those questions are answered, you would then have to think of how you survive. Where are you? An isolated area? Populated city? What do you have available to defend yourself with?

What you have to do in most cases is find shelter, and wait it out. I recomend the Dawn of the Dead scenario more than anything. Board yourself up in a mall, you will more than likely survive in comfort there. If you can't find a mall, any kind of department store will do, especially a Wal-Mart. In an isolated area? You have the best chance then, you have days before any serious number of zombies come for you. You can fortify your defenses, and prepare for the onslaught.

The ideal place to hide would be an island. Rigor Mortis, decaying flesh, and water do not mix well. Even if the zombie can get into the water, chances are they won't be able to just walk on over to your island and even then, the water weight will make them easy pickings.

But let's talk a mall, or department store, the most likely area to hide and survive:

Inside you will have food, shelter, fresh clothing, weaponry, and defendable terrain. It should be no hard concept to figure out how to defend yourself inside one of these places unless there is no power. Which is a possibility but there's also a good chance wherever you are will be selling generators and flashlights anyway. The first thing you have to do once getting to the safety zone of the mall/store is to find and seal off all entrances and exits. Anyway outside needs to be covered. Doors, windows, fire escapes, perhaps a tunnel system underneath leading to a parking garage. The Parking garage will be the worst place you can find, if possible you will want to collapse the parking structure somehow. Make sure it does not damage the building in any accessible way. It would be ideal if you could just collapse the garage and seal off exits without any problem. Realistically, you may need to just move some cars around. No keys? Red to yellow or yellow to blue, or just stab the keyhole with a screwdriver. Move the cars as close as possible to the entrances and exits, if the parking garage is secure and you have found no zombies, I recomend moving all the cars into blocking off the first floor and main entrance. Rig some to blow up if necessary.

Once the parking area is secure, lock all the doors. Seal them as much as possible. Cement, weld them shut, brace them somehow, anything to make sure nothing can get through. Now here is the tricky part, you will want one or two emergency exits for the just in case scenario. Never should they be on a ground floor. A rooftop, second or higher story window, basement access, or if possible, the loading area. A loading dock area should be big enough to hold some kind of vehicle inside, store it just in case, and seal the big metal doors, they won't get in but you can get out if you need to.

Once your building is secure it's time to arm up and set defences. You will want guns. Swords and axes look cool in movies, but suck in close range zombie fights. Blunt objects are ridiculously unsafe too. A gun is what you need. The shotgun is superior in it's ability to easily remove the head, but for most people it's impractical. A shotgun does not hold many rounds, it is not accurate, and the kick may be a bit much for some. A handgun, 9mm or so, works just fine and accuracy can be easily improved upon. Automatic weapons are probably the best line of defense you can have. The rapidfire sound may even scare zombies away as opposed to the one shot sound. They too can easily remove a head and hold much more ammunition. Remember to stock up on ammo. You will run out during an attack, you will have to reload. You cannot just fire a shotgun over and over without reloading.

If you are forced into a close encounter fight you will want the supreme zombie fighting weapon. The Chainsaw. Use it. Embrace it. Make it part of you. Never let it into the wrong hands.

Which brings me to my next point. Beware of how competent your zombie is. Fresh zombies have not been hit with rigor mortis, they will be fast and wild. Some can even retain knowledge to use weapons and tools. There is a chance you could encounter the rare but possible, smart zombie. No rigor mortis, still aware of himself, but also crazy and hungry. He can still fire a weapon and dodge a bullet. Most undead zombies will stand there and take the shell to the head, this one will dodge and try to fight the gun away from you.

If you can maintain your weapons, hold your defenses, and wait out until help comes, you may survive a zombie apocalypse.

But be warned, there is one scenario deadliest of all. The Lovecraftian Frankenstein Zombie scenario. By pure chance, you might be encounter a reanimated corpse made up of multiple corpses to be some form of super soldier. If may even have animal parts to give it an edge. Chances are you won't be able to take this bastard of science down with a bullet to the head at all. With these things, it has to be fire or electricution. Something to really damage the flesh.

Keep your nose clean, be alert, always carry extra ammo, never go out alone if you can avoid it. Try to find a group to survive with, being trapped alone may drive you mad. And remember, always run from zombies if you can. Do not stand your ground, they will eat your brains.

Best Week Ever

So I have one week before I make my presentation about this blog and what I learned from it and how well I accomplished my goal. My goal being to establish my ability as a writer to hold an audience which apparently I haven't. But then again I was also supposed to make social commentaries every week but things change. So I've decided to go apeshit and do one post per day now, not counting anything I throw on helium, until I have to report. I have a list of topics now too. I've decided to stick with what I know and blog about that, and this is what I know: crap. I'm going to make a list of things to talk about every week, maybe that way it would work better, hell I should have done that before. But now I'm going to do it, and maybe I'll keep doing it after the weblogs and wikis class is over, depending on whether or not I finally get some response.

Now my topic list. Seven topics, seven days:
Zombies
Picking a fight online
Comic Book Industry
Why Democracy doesn't work
People, Places, and Things I hate
Transformers
How we pick an exact date, time, and method of pulling out of Iraq safely and leaving it capable of sustaining itself without our presence or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

It's getting that time

I'm supposed to be finishing up this project so I can present it in class. But the problem is I do not have anything to present. I really don't know what I'm supposed to present and that's why I am not going first at all.

I'm slightly ashamed of you blog. I demand you get readers and make them comment on you or I will do something not nice. Or not. Either way it'd be nice to have a comment to present.

I'm so behind my project proposal it isn't even funny.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Helium some more

Another Helium post. I've been meaning to do more, but never find a topic I want to do. But I finally did and here it is. I'm just going to link it this time, I think that way if I actually do have a reader here you would go rate it there for sure.

Monday, April 23, 2007

The Internet is a vast wasteland

The internet is not for everyone. No matter what anyone says, there needs to be some kind of regulation to the internet. Don't get me wrong, I do believe anything and everything should be available on the internet. But not everyone should be accessing it. Especially kids. Especially if they are being given laptops to use in school now. I like that idea, my senior year at high school was cool because we got laptops to use. Even though they were iBooks. But that was high school. Elementary kids should not be given access to the vast wasteland of cybercrap that is the Internet. I think teaching kids to be techno-literate is a good idea, but that comes with the responsibility to make sure they don't start doing things they shouldn't. Who honestly believes that giving a kid an expensive laptop and sending them off to use it as they see fit is a good idea?

What happens when a kid grows up on computers without the proper knowledge of what he sees on the internet? Well he becomes me. But imagine an entire generation of me. I know, scary. At least I have the good sense to avoid internet jargon.

What worries me about kids growing up on the net is the blow that the state writing takes. Lolz, IMHO, OMG, 331902 whatever crap that happens when you start writing in net shorthand has apparently been slipping into this generation's writing. Is this the death of professionalism? Is blogging in general the death of professionalism in writing?

As blogging becomes more and more mainstream, more people begin a life of writing creatively. However, they are also completely untrained as writers. They're just typing away, with no knowledge of spelling and grammar. No concept of what they are writing and the effects of what they write. Commonly it seems they have no idea that anyone can read it.

Consequence is the greatest teacher. The internet is no man's land. Let's think this through, it connects to every country, everyone. Rules and regulations on the internet are vague. It seems to be that the general rule is do what you want without fear of consequence. Total Anarchy with the appearance of a set of rules guiding people. Have you ever been on a message board? Trolls are everywhere. I theorize that 80% of the internet denizen population is troll, and most of them are probably the same person. That stereotype about the nerdy 12 year old pissant kid posting on the internet to complain and whine about things and then harassing everyone by using poor grammar.

Now, harassment and the internet come hand in hand. If you are on the internet, especially while blogging, you should expect someone to flame you. This is what happens. Now, even if a death threat is given, that's typical internet behavior. Sometimes however, it goes too far. Take Kathy Sierra for example. What makes this different from your average blogger getting a troll? Well she's apparently a prominent blogger. I don't know what that means or how you get that title but it seems to mean she's somewhat celebrity. Now when you can be seen offline and actually do something you say online whilst offline, that changes the rules. If the harassment goes to the point where you actually feel threatened, someone has gone too far. Anonymity is good while avoiding internet sickos, but when the sicko is anonymous himself, then he can do what he wants without fear of consequence. What should be done involves the Internet Service Provider. You should be able to complain to an ISP when one of their users is overly harassing, the problem is you get the people who just run around stealing Wireless to go online. Logically, there has to be a way to get around that and find these people. Have I made death threats? Yes. Have they ever been to the extent that they become believable death threats? Maybe that one to whomever gets between me and Rosario Dawson, but they are never intended as such. Most are not. You should be able to read and detect the tone the writer of said threat intends, and with a generation of random key seekers out there blogging and commenting on blogs, that's not really happening.

I agree with the concept of a Blogger's Code of Conduct. But alas, it can't be properly enforced without whatever is providing the blog service to, well, enforce the code of conduct and bloggers don't want that. Bloggers don't want anyone to tell them what to do. No one on the internet does. That needs to change. You have power on the internet. You can express your opinion and influence others. That is a great power, and with great power comes great responsibility. You have to be responsible for what you do on the internet. You have to be held accountable for your actions online as well as offline. Maybe we need Big Brother, someone watching everything we do, because we online people get out of control when we have no consequence. Hell offline you need to be held accountable for everything or havoc and anarchy reigns. That's how society is kept together, consequences keep everything moving in order. That's just how life works.

Then again, I do completely support anarchy, because when everything goes to hell, the rebuilding process can begin. And we just might need to start over through the chaos. It's complicated. But listen to me internet, and listen good: Be good or else. You don't like the concept of someone censoring you? Too bad. Deal with it. Sometimes, people need to be censored, because they suck and they just need to be shut up. Everyone has the right to their own opinion, but they do not have the right to express it because yes, your opinion is probably wrong. Deal.


Does anyone read this? Is this living up to my project proposal?

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Spatula is a fun word to say.

So, even after coming to the conclusion I've failed my Blog Project, I'm still blogging about it. Read my blog, comment on it. That's all I ask of you Internet people. Would you like a post to comment on?

Scrubs is a fantastic show. I have recently purchased all the seasons on DVD, as well as reserved the next season coming out. I am watching Scrubs Season 4 right now as I type. This is the third greatest show on television, right behind Lost which is right behind Heroes. Watch these television shows... hey what if I start reviewing stuff? That might work as a blog project. But anyway, Scrubs is a fantastic show.

I awkwardly have parallels in my life to Scrubs. For instance, I am a Resident at a Hospital with a crazy mentor who hates me but really cares for everyone deep down as well as living in fear of a janitor out to get me while I know I have my black best friend whom I bought a stuffed dog with to watch my back and... wait no that's not me at all. But I do ...nope, nothing. That's what's cool about Scrubs, no correlations between television and my life. That creeps me out especially when most shows I watch are Sci-Fi or overly action related usually involving the end of the world or zombies.

Man I gotta watch out for zombies.

I sincerely enjoy the clever dialouge of Scrubs. The cartoonish antics of imaginary time for JD are greatly humorous. I can watch any episode of Scrubs over and over again. Maybe it's actually the best show on TV then.

LOST now, I can go back and watch it with people to show them how awesome Lost is and why they should shut up and get into it. Now into the third season I really can't not watch it. It's so plot twisted that I am somewhat angered by the end of the episode when nothing really happens. It's time to start answering unanswered questions damnit. Damn you Lost writers. Figure out what you're doing and finish it. I may kill someone out of tension over Lost. Yes, it's that extreme.

But my favorite television show is Heroes. What really gets me about this show is how the use of the super powers in a little bit at a time is just enough to make me have a fanboygasm. I think that's what makes the show click. You have this great story and great characters, and once you get them together it almost writes itself into a bastardly awesome story that you cannot turn away from.(Yes, I'm using bastard as an adjective now) The superpowers don't play a big role, it's the characters that drive the story. When the powers get used it comes off as a nice little extra, at least for a big fan of the show like me. It pushes the show over the edge of cool moments. I especially like when multiple powers get used, especially by the main character Peter Petrelli. His power is basically to have whatever power he encounters. The ultimate power really. I like the theory it throws out too about super powers like mutation, better than the X-men explaination. Evolution dictates the powers, the survival needs build the abilities. There's no laserbeam eyes or transformations into giant steel skinned Russians, but there are some things you have suspend belief for. At first they threw out some powers like super healing factor or telepathy, but eventually it evolved into X-men live action with a strong central story about diverting disaster with crazy super powers like nuclear radiation control, time travel, intangibility, flight, and pyrokinesis. But whatever because much bigger super powers equals cooler scenes. Eventually, it looks like they will spit out some great fight scenes between the villain of the series and Peter Petrelli. That would just make great may sweeps and a great season finale. See, these writers know what they're doing, I'm talking to you JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof! Why? Because one of them is Jeph Loeb. You do something like Heroes you get a comic book writer, especially a legend like Loeb. Hey, Heroes comes back with new episodes on Monday. Watch it.

All this show needs is a superpowered crazy mercenary with a healing factor and spider-man like get up who likes to kill and make wisecracks and nearly schitzophrenic dialouge while doing so named after a Eastwood movie reminiscent of Ryan Reynolds on crack.

Deadpool is awesome.


That concludes my post-realizing I have a crappy blog post. Someone should comment on it. Give me something to do. Hell, start a blog war with me. I'll say anything to piss people off. Jesus was a black jew muslim and potentially a homosexual. See?

I actually have evidence to back that up too.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

I live in a Douglas Adams book.

I'm fairly sure I live inside the mind of Douglas Adams. Which frightens me because he's supposedly dead. That and the bizarre twists of logic I live with everyday. The strange and quirky adventures I go through everyday feel like they belong in the Hitchhiker's guide. That may just be because I have been rescued seconds before the destruction of the Earth by a crazed party seeking friend only to go on a journey that ends with me returning to mysteriously revived planet Earth several times by now. Actually I think life would be better off living in a story by Douglas Adams. Seems like I wouldn't have to deal with a lot of the stuff I do then. Mainly because most of that stuff would not exist, but regardless, I would have to deal with some form of bills, gas prices, moving, and all that nonsense of everyday human life.

I'm actually in the process of moving right now and am not sure if I will finish this post before I pack up my computer and send it on over to my new house. Nope. My friends just showed up randomly to help me move. Clicking save as a draft and...

Three days later I finally get my computer up and running on fancy wireless now with the ability to pirate multiple wireless connections. Now I'm bored and for some strange reason my new room makes me feel very sleepy. Maybe it's because I'm exhausted by the time I get to my bed through the piles of stuff in bags and boxes; which I should really sort.

I've come to the conclusion in the past few days while thinking of how to finish this draft post, and how more and more I seem to encounter Hitchhiker references, that my original project proposal for this blog has basically failed. I have no audience, as far as I know there is only one person reading my blog not in the class. I feel like I've failed. It sucks. I've thrown it out there, over and over again but nothing comes from it. What can I do I wonder?

I have a class at Bemidji State University, called Weblogs and Wikis, interestingly enough required for my BFA. This is the blog project from that class. I proposed to write social commentary every week about something. I think I got the idea while watching Best Week Ever on VH1. I kinda did that, but I also just blogged. I think I should go back and start some new blog entries for social commentary. But after actually looking at society I am disgusted by it and do not want to even acknowledge it exists. I have the strange desire to completely destroy it all and start over, Mad Max style. However my mood is very unstable and sometimes I'm completely and utterly disgusted by what I see in everyday life and then a second later I can't live without it. Perhaps I should switch up my project idea a little. (Great idea this late in the game) Society is broad. I should focus more locally. On my friends and their society. I have some weird ass friends.

But it is a nice day out and I am sitting here typing instead of frolfing. So I'm going to hold off on doing that today and go out into the sun. Or go get some Chinese Food because I'm hungry. One of the two.

This also took forever to post for some reason blogger kept giving me error messages about not being connected when no other site did. I was worried about my wireless card for a second. But now Blogger just craps out on my connection. I don't know why it took four days to post this when I finished it so long ago. Damn you blogger connection.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Someone stole my CDs

This morning, I woke up to go to work and got in my car and noticed some things from my side armrest were on the passenger seat. I look inside and my CD case is gone. Not the face plate to the player or the player itself or anything else, just my case of burned cds and stuff made up of random mp3s. I don't know who did it, but I'm going to get them back. And I'm going to kill whoever did this. Slowly.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

I love Rosario Dawson

Not just in a "I love her in ____" kind of way or the characters she's portrayed. I love the person. I'm fairly sure I'm obsessed with Rosario Dawson. Everything about her, at least as much as I can know without ever actually having met her, leads me to believe she is the one and only for me. It's like the One-Above-All sent her here just for me sometimes; how else does one describe the appearence on Earth of a goddess of a woman who loves comics and nerdy shit as much as I do? Now there's no doubt there's a shitload of geeks thinking the same thing, but I will kill each and everyone of them if I have to. Just saying. There only way I can truly describe my feelings for her is that I would do things with her, that could probably get me arrested or at least sentenced to an eternity in Hell. My creepy infatuation will more than likely get me in trouble some day. Probably the day I decide to attend some big Comic Con where she appears. Ever see Borat? Yeah I can't promise I won't do that.

However, I can promise that I will go see Grindhouse simply because she's in it. That's the only reason I saw Alexander, which I shut off after realizing she wasn't coming back after the 89th hour of that movie. I think I may just call in that favor Kevin Smith owes me and make him introduce me to her. Now I saw favor, but really it's just the ammount of money I spent on his Spider-Man and Black Cat comic that took four years to produce a handful of issues. Seriously, what the hell? I'm still pissed about that. What did he do in the meantime of writing that series that ended up really going nowhere? Jersey Girl. F'n Jersey Girl. What did Jersey Girl make him realize? He's only good at his View Askew world. Kevin Smith you owe me like 20 bucks and four years of waiting time. Ok, so I admit I'd still pay the money to get his work. You've got talent Kevin Smith, but seriously, what the hell man?

Speaking of Spider-Man, I'm very excited about Spider-Man 3 coming out. I'm considering forcing myself into a coma until opening night. However, that'd just be silly and there's always the chance I might miss Rosario Dawson randomly appearing in front of me needing me to save her from an evil Sith Lord... that later turns out to be her father who is also my father and... damnit Star Wars sucks. Really, that sucks. Really really sucks. I f'n hate Star Wars. Star Trek is much better. Why? One word: Picard.

When you think about it, Star Wars was a piss poor movie. The story was pretty basic and characterization vague and uneven. The special effects being cutting edge are what made it so cool. However, once you watch it and pay attention you realize there is nothing to this story. The Empire, which besides the destruction of Alderan really doesn't seem that evil, is really weak. Especially if they put a self destruction opening on their battleship the Death Star. Think back, what if anything made the Empire seem evil? Just Alderan. Sure the Sith are evil but the Empire seemed to work just fine. The rebellion seemed to be what caused the problems. Plus there was this super powerful Sith lord Darth Vader and the Emporer who were so strong with the Force, yet they couldn't find a simple rebel base but could with ease wipe out the Jedi? Luke Skywalker made out with his sister and had no response to that concept at all. No one did.

There was just way too many plot holes and logical fallicies in that movie. Star Trek had them too, but hey, they also had f'n Patrick Stewart. But when you get down to it, the superior Sci-Fi program is always Doctor Who. The greatest sci-fi story of all time involves whatever the Doctor is doing at any given time.

....um. I just looked over what I wrote. I feel geeky. Super geeky. But I have an insane ammount of pop-culture knowledge like this in my brain. I really hope that's a turn on to Rosario Dawson.

....Man now that's obsession.

I don't really have a point to this post after all I guess. Just killing time until the Chimps make their move. Or until Lost comes on. Either/or really. Did I ever mention how awesome Lost is? Because it is. Go watch it.

One day, I'm just going to blog about what I see on TV. Hopefully it's Rosario Dawson.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

Dude

Yeah. I'm excited.




The greatest thing England has ever produced, second only to Doctor Who and Red Dwarf.