Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse

 I dream about zombies way too much.  Probably 80% of my bad dreams involve being chased by zombies, usually in a burnt-out post-apocalyptic wasteland.  It has been probably a decade since I’ve dreamed of any other kind of boogie-man.  I no longer fear vampires, ghosts, ax murderers, werewolves, Freddie Kruger or any other imaginary terror.  Zombies have replaced them all as the standardized fear in my nightmares.  That makes sense too since most of my suppressed real-life fears involve things I’m trying to avoid, like an unpleasant task at work or putting myself in uncomfortable social situations.  What better to represent my avoidance than a zombie?  It’s something that exists exclusively to be avoided because if you interact with it, you will suffer serious consequences, like disembowelment, cannibalism or the social pariah-ism that comes with turning into a zombie if you get bitten, scratched, puked or bled on.  Being chased by them in my dreams equates to me trying to run away from my fears, from avoiding something I don’t want to do but that needs to be done.  Still, knowing why I dream of zombies doesn’t make it any less scary in my dreams when I’m running through a deserted building, looking for an exit before the horde of moaning zombies catch up to me.  Even when I do find an exit, that just takes me to the next level and the next batch of zombies,  particularly since in my dreams these are the 28 Days Later zombies, the kind that move pretty darn fast.  You can’t outrun your fears forever although I keep trying to.  Evasion is an ingrained response. 

The other 20% of my bad dreams involve math, usually me stressing about a math class I have to get to or that I have to pass if I want to graduate college.  Math is my go-to representation for a fear of ineptitude and incompetence.  I’m terrible at advanced math (meaning anything beyond addition and subtraction which is ironic since at work I’m known as “the spreadsheet guy” or “the analytical guy”.)  If I don’t think I’d be good at something, I try to avoid doing it, just like I coasted by in my math classes, either because I didn’t like them or couldn’t easily comprehend them.  So to sum up, my two biggest fears are being incompetent and being forced to do something I don’t want to do- either because it is unpleasant or I think I can’t do it well.  It’s a common set of fears, I think.  In fact, I saw a quote today- "Only the mediocre are always at their best (Jean Giraudoux)”- which aptly sums that up.  Not everyone is always at their best.  I just happen to be bothered by that concept and my math-worry is the dream state representation of that fear of failure.  

For instance, I’m dreading having senior moments. Even now, I sometimes can’t think of the name of someone in a movie, and that’s supposed to be “my thing.”  I can remember the name and plot of the movie and the actor’s face, just not the name of the C-list actor who starred in it twenty years ago.  Granted, most people can’t even remember seeing the movie, much less those details but that doesn’t make me feel any better that it took me awhile to remember the name of the guy.  (Who was in fact so forgettable that now I can’t even remember what movie/actor I was trying to pull out of the fog in my brain last week.)  So there is another reason zombies are the perfect dream fear.  They also represent death and decay and the decline of one’s physical body and abilities.  I used to dream about my teeth falling out but that hasn’t happened lately.  There’s no need for different dream themes- zombies can step in as the catch-all metaphor for every fear I have (that isn’t math-related.)  I’m trying to outrun everything at once- death, disease and old age in addition to all the unpleasant activities I’m trying to avoid in my life.  Next thing you know, my bad dreams will reach singularity as I try to dodge zombie math professors.

To switch to a conversation less serious than “zombies as a metaphor for the fear of death”, I would like to offer a few thoughts on how to survive a zombie apocalypse.  I have thought about this a lot lately because zombie dreams are a way to work through my real life obstacles and immobilizing fears.  If I can win in the zombie world, maybe that success will carry over into succeeding in the real world, where there are no such things as zombies (unless you happen to apply that label to people who are inflexible thinkers, corrupt politicians, unethically profit-driven business executives or monolithic, cookie cutter entertainment companies.)  Why should you listen to what I say on this topic?  My qualifications are irreproachably simple- years of escaping zombies in my dreams, watching way too many zombie movies and constantly being amazed at the stupidity of other people.  Don’t underestimate that last one either. If you consider how stupid some people act now, imagine what happens when you throw zombies into the mix (or when they become zombies.)  On top of that, I’m also quite paranoid and have thought through some topics normal people don’t consider.  This is a benefit for end of the world scenarios but a bit of a drawback in normal situations.  For instance, last week a conversation got around to what-ifs like “What if you live in an apartment and need to leave quickly?  There will be zombies in the stairwell so you are screwed.”  I got some funny looks when I said “You go out the window. I keep some rope in my house just in case the stairwell is blocked during a fire or zombie attack.”   So here is some advice from me about how to escape real or dream zombies.

1)      Stock Up: First of all, you need to have supplies ready ahead of time.  Don’t wait until an emergency happens to start stocking up on supplies.  If you recall how people panic and descend on the grocery store when the news forecasts a big snowstorm, imagine what they’ll do when the news guy warns them about the dead rising up to feed on the flesh of the living.  Within an hour of that good news, you won’t see any milk or bread anywhere.  Ever again.  Why do you think the guy in the movie Zombieland had such a tough time finding a Twinkee?  Next time you go grocery shopping, pretend you are stocking up for an unforeseen disaster. Mormons do it all the time.  So do neo-Nazi survivalist groups.  Do you want those to be the only people with food supplies when the shit hits the fan?  Me neither.  Start stocking up on Cherry Coke Zero, bottled water and split-pea soup now.  Worst case scenario- you’ll be able to use those supplies for some other non-zombie disaster situation, like when the power goes out during an ice storm or an Afghan terrorist blows up the local power plant.  Or a dinner party.

2)      Fortify:  No, I don’t mean take your vitamins. I mean build a fort.  Not one out of blankets or cardboard boxes or sticks and straw.  I mean a real fort or a castle.  If you saw the movie Resident Evil: Afterlife, they converted a whole dang prison into a stronghold.  It worked just as well keeping out zombies as it did keeping in prisoners.  Plus it looked wicked cool, especially in 3-D.  If you don’t happen to live near a prison, or an ancient castle with moats and turrets or a military complex then find something suitable near you (Hmm- I wonder if I could use the Pentagon…).  Seek high ground, control the access points and minimize the noise and light.  If you have steel doors and door frames, weld shut the ones that are likely zombie entranceways.  Barricade the windows. Shore up the walls. If you saw I Am Legend, use that house as your starting point.  Don’t yield any ground outside or any room inside.  Create layers of barriers so that it is a struggle to advance towards you.    

If you live on the second floor of an apartment building, in Oakton for instance, you can weld your door frame shut and go in and out through the windows, but don’t forfeit the turf leading up to that door.  Park a big old Hummer in front of the door on the first floor so things can’t inadvertently shamble in.  Clutter up the stairwell with furniture or trash or shopping carts (a la 28 Days Later) so it is not easy to crawl up the stairs.  Black out the glass part of the walls in the hallway so anything that does get up the stairs doesn’t see you and try to get at you if you happen to be in the hallway checking the stairwell.  That is, if you have glassed walls in your hypothetical stairwell in hypothetical Oakton.  Make sure the windows are covered too.  If zombies don’t see you, or hear you, they are likely to keep on moving.  Don’t give them a reason to notice your domicile.  (So no blasting AC/DC music.  ‘Cool’ isn’t worth dying for.)

When I’m driving to work I look at the buildings around me and I’ve noticed that CVS stores seem like pretty good locations in an emergency.  If the parking lot is empty, you’ll have clear lines of sight for fields of fire.  Even though they have glass windows, they are fairly high off the ground and since most zombies don’t know what a ladder is, you could quickly fortify a CVS.  Black out the windows, back an SUV in front of the glass doors (then black them out and lock them), weld shut and barricade the delivery door in the back of the building and you’ve got a good location.  I think CVS architects designed them this way to keep out real life zombies- drug addicts who might try to break in to get to the pharmacy.  Plus, they come pre-stocked with food, medicine, toiletries, Cheetos and lawn chairs.  I’m sure there are employee restrooms somewhere too.  You have everything you need to exist for a couple of months while absorbing the horror of what has happened and coming up with a game plan.  I can’t stress how helpful Cheetos will be in this situation.  They may become the new currency after the zomb-pocalypse.  Either Cheetos or M&M’s. 

I should point out a couple of places that are not good places to hole up.  The idiots in Shaun Of The Dead actually tried hiding in The Winchester, the local pub.  Yeah, it has loads of beer and peanuts, but it had ground level glass windows and was in the middle of the infested area.  Plus they turned on the jukebox!  Getting away from Ground Z(ombie)ero is always a good idea.  The refugees in The Walking Dead got that part right.  They left the city, went to the top of a mountain and stayed in their campers and jeeps.  Except for that one couple who pitched a tent.  A tent?  Really?  Those can’t even keep out mosquitos and bugs so how will they keep out a zombie who’s trying to eat you?  Plus they left it unzipped.  They deserved to get eaten for being stupid.  Basically, find a safe place quickly and make it even safer once you get there.  And for god’s sake, if you seek refuge in an amusement park, don’t start up the rides and the carnival lights.  That’s like ringing the dinner bell.

3)      Game Plan:  Even though fighting for your life isn’t really a game, you need to come up with a game plan.  If you want it to sound more official or serious, we can call it an action plan or a contingency plan but basically you need to figure out what the hell you are going to do.  On the plus side, you don’t have to worry about going to work Monday.  On the negative side, you’ve become part of the food chain.  That kind of requires you to reorder your priorities a bit.  You can’t dash over to Starbuck’s when you need a coffee and it’s a heck of a lot harder to find a babysitter.  If you are going to venture outside the safety of your fortress, you should establish your “to-do” list before heading out the door.  There are lots of possible game plans you can come up with.  Some have merit, some are naively optimistic and some are downright stupid but at least decide on a course of action before hopping into your heavily fortified vehicle. 

There are several possible reasons to leave a secure area.  Maybe you need to get more essential supplies like food and water or gasoline for your generator and escape vehicles.  That’s a good short-term plan obviously.  Perhaps you have decided it is time to try to find that safe colony you heard about on the radio or from a survivor you met while foraging.  That’s a nice idea but how often has that panned out?  I don’t think any safe haven in a zombie movie has turned out to be anything other than a pipe dream.  You are better off staying where you are unless you’ve drawn the attention of the zombies and the congregation forming outside your fortress is about to outnumber the quantity of bullets you have left.  Then maybe it is time to get mobile again.

Perhaps you are smart and have developed a cure for zombieness.  You would want to test that so you need some specimens to test it on.  Rather than creating a breach in your fortress to allow one or two creatures to get in, which would likely invoke Murphy’s Law, you would go out for a “catch and return.”  If you are certain that the cure works, you’d want to go find other humans and salvageable recently infected zombies-to-be.  I would even join you on the road for that mission.  I will not be following along though if your game plan is to “find your family.”  Get a clue- they are already zombified and will consider you to be lunch meat the second you walk through the door.  It is a fool’s errand. 

The only possible exception is if you recently talked to them.  That might be harder than you think because phone companies probably will stop working after the Z-plague.  Not because the employees were eaten but because there is no one there to post your payments.  I bet utilities are probably stupidly set up with a default to cancel service if no action is taken.  I wonder how many systems like internet service, electricity, cable and cell phones will continue on without employees?  I’d better hedge my bets now by making sure everything is on a monthly autopay plan.  Regardless, a recent conversation with a loved one something like an hour ago, not last month and not because some random survivor said “I think Cleveland avoided the infestation.”  No it didn’t.  I would not even consider it unless my Mom called me on the phone that morning and said “I’m fine and I don’t see anything dangerous around but I’m afraid to leave the house.”  In that situation, I would gas up and go across town or across the state to get to her.  I’m not sure I’d risk cross country though- will the gas pumps be functional without an attendant at the station?  (And I mean a living attendant.)  Maybe you can meet me halfway?

Another plan I can’t support is the “Let’s go out for a zombie hunt and kill as many as we can.”  Sorry- I know how often hunting accidents happen and that’s without the wildlife trying to eat you while you are hunting them.  I’ll just stay in my secure area and use my sniper rifle to put them down.  I’ll use a silencer as well so I don’t make enough noise to draw attention.  When you do return from your little trip though (assuming you do make it back alive), be sure to check the place out.  Just because there were no zombies inside when you left doesn’t mean there are none inside now. 

This is because people are still stupid and the same people who used to lose their car keys or forget if they turned off the stove will be the ones who leave the back door open when they go out.  You would think the situation would force people to be more attuned to their surroundings but it doesn’t.  Nothing ruins a homecoming like opening the door and finding zombies inside the house to go along with those outside the house and heading your way.  The game plan I will be endorsing is the “Stay alive as long as possible” plan.  In general, that will mean staying put and only venturing out when absolutely necessary. I won’t vacate the premises until I am forced to, namely because it was overrun or there is a cure.  Which brings me to the next topic.

4)      Exits: Are located here and here and this is how we get to them, quickly.  Even though you are safe now, that can change.  Have an exit plan in place.  Know where to go when it is time to go.  The most idiotic thing in Shaun Of The Dead was not that the main characters holed up in the local pub. It was that once they got to the glass enclosed, ground level building, they didn’t think about how they would leave when the time came (or the beer ran out.)  When the windows were breached, they hid behind the bar.  Like they wouldn’t get sniffed out in that clever hiding place.  That’s like hiding under the bed when a psycho killer is in the house.  After he checks the closet, he’s going to look under the bed.  Then behind the shower curtain.  How can someone not know these things?  Shaun and his friends got lucky and found a cellar hatch but they should have known about that immediately, before they sat around drinking.

Here’s a little ditty for you to make it easy- “Exit before beer, never fear.  Beer before exits, you’re breakfast.”  Along the same lines, don’t get backed into a corner- always know your exits.  When you enter a room, immediately locate the best exit in case you can’t leave the way you came from.  Zombieland knew the importance of that and made it one of the official rules.  Along the same lines, stay away from enclosed areas.  For example, there are only two ways out of an air shaft.  If you go into the shaft because of what is chasing you, you have to cross your fingers and hope that nothing is in front of you.  As a survival strategy, “crossing your fingers” should not be high up your list of options.

5)      Weaponize: I don’t know how many years I have been preaching this.  Always have a weapon handy.  Always.  I don’t care if your best friend or wife has been shot.  Do NOT toss aside your weapon and comfort them.  You can cradle their dying body in one hand and hang onto a gun with the other, even if you aren’t ambidextrous.  Do you really want to look into his/her eyes, watch them die and then turn around to find out that your gun is behind those three zombies that shuffled up while you were reenacting Terms Of Endearment?  No.  As Marine drill sergeants say “Your weapon is your best friend.”  It will not try to eat you shortly after you’ve cried over its’ dead body nor will it convince you to engage in stupid heroics.  It will simply kill things for you without question.  What more can you ask for in a best friend? 

Along those same lines, you can never have too many weapons.  Why risk running out of protection?  If you walk past a dead body holding a shotgun, pick up that shotgun.  If you see an ax lying around, retrieve it.  If a dead soldier has a grenade or ammo clip on his belt, grab it.  (Of course, be sure watch his head and hands while doing so- no one likes to pilfer some ammo and get bit on the neck by a recent zombie cross-over.)  Do you go fishing without a rod?  Do you play soccer with a football?  Do you make cookies without sugar?  No, so why would you go into a zombie wasteland without a way to kill zombies?  If you saw a $20 bill on the ground you’d pick it up.  Do the same thing with an Uzi or a grenade.  An IED is effective against a zombie’s “I Eat Thee” attitude.  Being armed to the teeth is just good policy.  Why would you ever want to run out of ammo or not have a backup in case your favorite gun jams at a bad time? More guns, more peace of mind.  The NRA should use this as their new slogan.

This doesn’t apply just to zombie apocalypses either.  I can’t think of any situation that isn’t improved by carrying a weapon.  Camping- you might run into bears so it would be a good idea to have a gun.  Grocery store run- someone might try to carjack you (or take your parking spot) and a machete would prevent that.  Kylie Minogue concert- carrying a shotgun with you certainly seems to thin the line of people waiting for the urinals.  Watching television- what better way to express your dissatisfaction with the outcome of the Women’s World Cup game than by smashing the TV with a baseball bat?  A wedding- maybe this is the one exception.  Then again, in the movie Kill Bill Pt. 2, it certainly would have helped to be packing heat at Uma Thurman’s nuptials.  Plus, what better way to answer that question of “Does anyone here object to this marriage” than with a round of mortar fire?  It makes a nice punctuation mark after you say that you object.   (Or if you are the groom and you see someone about to object, you can nip that in the bud pretty quickly with a well-placed shot to that person’s leg.)

One more word about weapons.  Swords and machetes never run out of bullets.  What will you do if you are surrounded by 40 zombies and you only have a pistol with 16 bullets and one spare clip? That’s eight more zombies you can’t shoot in the head.  (A side note- always shoot them in the head.  You know a torso shot does nothing so why waste the bullets?  “Destroy the head to kill the undead”- it works for zombies, vampires, psycho killers, Medusa- heck, even sharks.)  If you are carrying a machete with you in addition to your gun, you have a way to dispatch those last eight horrors.  None of the people in zombie movies seemed to have figured this out. Someone may have an edged weapon at some point, but they always lose it or throw it away (often to comfort their dying friend.)  Stupid.   

6)      Strip:  No, I’m not talking about going to a strip club although it might relieve some of your anxiety about being treated like a buffet table.  Even if you were willing to venture outside and could find one, it’s likely that it would be populated with very ugly strippers.  Not coyote ugly, but ugly like flesh falling off their own limbs because they were zombie strippers (just like the movie of that same name.)  Plus even if they weren’t zombies but just normal strippers, how would you pay them?  I don’t think a few $1 bills in a G-string would satisfy them in this circumstance.  They’d probably want your weapons or some of your food, neither of which is worth exchanging for a few glances of naked flesh. 

When I say “Strip”, I mean it is time to see your friends and family naked.  Plus complete strangers, priests, pets and whoever else is holed up in your stronghold.  If some of them happen to be strippers that would be an added bonus but is totally unrelated to what I intend with this rule.  I don’t say “Strip” to be prurient though, I say this to be cautious.  How many times has someone gotten bit or scratched in a zombie movie and tried to hide it?  I understand why’d they would do that- someone in the group will want to shoot them right away, without even the courtesy of waiting for them to die first. 

The infectee, however, is still very much human and a bit opposed to taking a bullet in the head.  They will cover up the bite, hide the scratches and attempt to laugh off that their eyes are turning bloodshot, that they are getting nauseous and puking up black liquid or that appendages are starting to fall off.  They will say they are just tired or hungover or stressed out or pregnant.  Then when you are asleep, they cross over and try to eat you while you are dreaming of hot cheeseburgers and cold milkshakes.  Not a good start to your day.  So the easiest way to avoid becoming a zombie’s “Steve-burger” or “Mike-shake” is by verifying that everyone inside the shelter with you is infection free. 

Thus, strip.  If everyone sees you naked, they can tell if you have a bite on the butt, a scratch on the arm, or a chunk missing from your thigh.  There will be no secrets, no unexpected surprises and no need for $1 bills.   The peep show will finally have a worthwhile purpose.  Not that you want to see everyone naked though.  Your band of buddies is more likely to contain a bunch of people measuring more along the lines of 38-42-46 rather than 36-26-36 (or my personal ideal of 34-26-32).  The sexy, good looking people assume nothing bad can ever happen to them so they just kept on shopping when the first zombies started their rampage at the mall.  Still it’s going to be necessary to disrobe once a day.  It’s no different than checking someone for ticks if they have been out in the woods.  If you just ask someone “Are you a zombie?” they are never going to say yes.  That whole survival instinct thing is still going on.  If you get someone who refuses to do it, they have either been bitten and know they’ll be found out or else they are too stupid to understand that modesty isn’t practical anymore.  Either way you need to show them the error of their thought process.  To paraphrase the well-known philosopher Ivan, I say that if your friends don’t strip, well they’re no friends of mine, which means they need to get out of my hideout now.    

7)      Organize: This may sound a bit like “Game Plan” but it’s only the same in that macro-economics and micro-economics are the same.  The point here is that you need to step away from the big picture and look at the details now that you’ve started to settle in.  Don’t assume that people will remember to sleep in shifts and maintain lookouts.  Set up a schedule detailing who keeps watch when and make sure someone is in charge of verifying that those shifts are covered.  If everyone knew what they should be doing, how to do it properly and would do it without prompting, there would be no need for middle management in any company. That’s not the way things really are though so you’ll need to figure out how much food everyone gets and be sure that no one raids the pantry for extras just because they are hungry.  The zombies are hungry too but that doesn’t mean we are going to throw open the doors and let them feast.  The quicker you use up your supplies, the sooner you have to venture back out and get more, which means the sooner you are again at risk of becoming zombie chum.  Those hungry whiners won’t be the ones volunteering to go out either- they’ll say they need to stay behind and do laundry or inventory the weapons.   

As for venturing out, that needs to be coordinated too.  One idiot can’t decide that he’s going to open the gate or unbar the door and go find some more water or look for someone who didn’t make back on the last supply run.  Can you name a single instance when someone snuck away on their own, planning to be right back, and it turned out well?  No, never.  It always leads to disaster.  You need to have an established procedure for leaving the compound.  Who will provide tactical weapons coverage when you open the door and will close it behind the exiting group?  How long will they be gone?  Where are they going?  Is the mission worthwhile or foolhardy?  In medieval times, the drawbridge wasn’t opened and closed willy-nilly.  There were guards who controlled when it happened and who could come in.  Same idea here. 

 Since you are in the middle of a combat situation and you need establish order and procedure, a quasi-military structure makes sense.  Someone with a clear head and reasonable plan should be giving the orders.  You want Sarah Connor or John Connor guiding you, not Paul Reiser’s character from Aliens or anyone who mentions “cost”, “company image” or “shareholders”. Lawyers, congressmen and sports figures are automatically excluded from consideration since they are obviously too far removed from reality to be effective.   You can vote for who is in charge of the overall game plan if you want to maintain a sense of democracy but the smaller details need to be overseen and carried out by other people following an established set of rules.  If this idea makes you uncomfortable, you can look at it another way.  Pretend you are in a Best Buy store.  Each department was workers who know how things run in that department and someone who is charge of making sure that area is staffed, organized and functioning smoothly.  There are other people in charge of store security, customer service, shipping & receiving and merchandising.  Then you have the store manager who keeps an eye on profitability and overall operations. 

 That scenario applies in this grim situation.  Your fortress is the Best Buy and you have people who do certain tasks, like food gathering or guard duty or medical services, and people in charge of overall security or operations for the complex with one person (or a board of directors) in charge of survivability.  No one just wanders around the store doing nothing- everyone has a job to perform and rules about how to do it.  That’s common sense, right?  So think of your current situation like you were a Best Buy employee, without the blue shirts.  And with guns.  And zombies playing the role of the “consumer”, literally.  

8)      Dodgeball: Why would I mention this playground game in a discussion of surviving a zombie attack?  Because mastering the concepts and strategies of the game can be very useful in other situations besides recess.  What’s the principle objective of dodgeball?  To not get hit.  What’s the main strategy of zombie survival? To not get bit.  What’s the idea of politics?  To not get pinned with the blame.  To getting ahead at work?  To not get stuck with bad projects or bad employees.  To getting somewhere quickly?  Not getting stuck in the slow lane.  Just like dodgeball is about avoiding a red rubber ball and the social stigma of being out of the game, survival in any “arena” is about dodging the “ball” and avoiding the traps the other team is setting for you.  My zombie bad dreams are all about avoiding the creatures and the real-world problems they represent.  After the Z-plague hits, dodging skills are literally and figuratively useful. You can’t get bit if nothing can catch you. 

Another skill gleaned from dodgeball- cardio fitness.  Yes, I’m directly plagiarizing this from Zombieland but it is incredibly important and worth reiterating.  You might be able to outrun a zombie but if you aren’t in shape, you won’t be able to outrun the third one or the fourth one that comes after you.  You know the old joke about not needing to run faster than a grizzly bear, just faster than the person beside you?  Well the same thing applies to the undead.  Being physically fit is no longer just a vanity thing, although working on your biceps and abs still doesn’t matter as much as cardio work.  You might look great when it comes time to strip for the evening but I’d rather spend my time on cardio work.  That way I’ll be able to run after that last truck that is leaving the area because zombies broke through our defensive fortifications.

One last thing that directly translates from dodgeball skills- working in teams to accomplish goals.  You might have great reflexes and amazing peripheral vision but if you are off by yourself without anyone to block for you and contribute a massed firepower response, you’ll be in trouble because everyone will go after you first, being an easy to target to focus on and eradicate before moving on to the more difficult threat- an organized group of dodgeballers.  There is nothing that one person can do better than a group of people could do.  Even snipers work with a spotter.  Teams work.  I should also give a shout-out to other D-ball skills such as shot accuracy, defensive positioning and complete awareness of your surroundings since they are also critical survival skills in the Z-era.  Heck, dodgeball might even replace “The Art Of War” as the best source for strategic planning and successful combat.

9)      Dress Code/Suit Up:  Let’s say that the CEO of the company you work for is stopping by the office today.  Do you think this is a good day to skip putting on a tie?  Or maybe you have a casual workplace- are you going to wear those raggedy jeans that are your favorite pair of pants?  When you go to a wedding, do you wear hot pants and a Hooters half-shirt that shows off your cute belly piercing? Do you go to church in your Iron Maiden t-shirt?  Do you wear a bikini when you go visit a sick friend in the hospital?  No, you don’t do any of these things because they are not appropriate.  There is a proper dress code to follow in various situations.  Most people realize this.  If you are one of those that don’t, then by all means wear your bikini the next time I throw a dinner party but don’t be offended if everyone spends the whole dinner gawking at you, either with lust (the guys) or disdain at your classless ensemble (the girls) or with anticipation that you’ll drop some food underneath the table (the dog).

Now imagine you are in the middle of a plaque infested wasteland and surrounded by creatures who want to eat your flesh and the slightest bite or fleeting scratch from them will turn you into one of them.  You spend your days crawling through dank, rotting buildings and putting up walls and fortifications.  So what do you wear in such an environment?  No, flip flops, cargo shorts and a t-shirt is not the correct answer.  No, not even if you throw in a baseball cap worn backwards.  You are not going to a 4^th of July barbecue.  Nor is the answer “a nice suit”.  If you wind up starring on the show “How I Met Your Mother”, then yes it is appropriate to do as Barney says and “Suit up!”  If you are in the midst of a real-life Walking Dead scenario, that phrase takes on a whole different meaning. 

Out here, the dress code is “Survival Casual”.  This means you need to be scrounging up protective gear.  Think face masks, Kevlar vests, knee pads and steel-toed boots.  You are not dressing up to show off your fashion sense or to attract the opposite sex anymore.  You don’t anyone to notice you at all, much less have easy access to your sensitive spots.  You don’t want them to admire your tan or cleavage or have your jewelry catch their eye.  In fact, you are dressing to repel people.  This doesn’t mean leisure suits, fur coats or headbands and leggings.  It means outfits that give you a few seconds of protection so you can fight back against the undead’s unwanted advances.  In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, “dressed to kill” is a literal expression.  Think of Mad Max as the new Georgio Armani.    

When football players take the field, they dress to avoid injury by wearing helmets, shoulder pads, and back braces.  When soldiers hit the field, they dress to avoid injury by wearing helmets, Kevlar vests, durable boots and clothing that covers their extremities.  When the CDC hits ground zero of an infection, they dress to avoid injury and contamination by wearing body suits and masks to protect them from infected materials and accidental contamination.  When you hit the ground running from zombies, the same principle applies to you- you need to be wearing something that helps you avoid injury and infection.  You will be driving souped up vehicles covered in armor plating with guns mounted on top so why wouldn’t your apparel mirror that aesthetic?  Let’s look to your new fashion icons for some ideas. 

First of all, you are going to be doing lots of walking and running and mucking about in nasty areas so you need to have proper footwear.  The Army has a bit of experience in this area and I will admit a fondness for wearing combat boots.  When winter rolls around and there is snow on the ground, that’s what I wear.  The ones I have are from more than 20 years ago and they are the basic black ones so I can only imagine what the newer jungle boots are like.  I figure they are really comfortable and water resistant and made of materials that are resistant to bites from zombies crawling on the ground.  After all, they are called combat boots.  Where are you going to find a more appropriate name for a piece of appeal to wear for the zombie apocalypse? 

Now my fondness for the boots doesn’t carry over to the Army’s socks.  My memories of them are of ill-fitting, itchy things that didn’t wick moisture very well.  I’m going to go with regular hiking socks of the type found in REI or Bass Outdoor shops.  I’ve got a couple pairs that have lasted me ten years and feel awesome on my feet.  Why mess with perfection?  As for pants, the idea of cargo shorts is half-right.  You want durable pants with lots of pockets for carrying things like ammunition, food, medicine, more ammunition, keys for the Humvee and for even more ammunition, but they need to be full-length pants.  Cover the legs so zombies don’t think they are looking at an appetizer- human “chicken wings”.  I’m partial to Army B.D.U. pants because they’ve held up pretty well for me and again, with a name like Battle Dress Uniform, you know what they are intended for.  Maybe you are a Levi’s guy or gal.  That’s fine- they are pretty rugged too although you won’t have as many pockets for ammunition (and I’m not giving you any of mine.)  Don’t stop there though.  Reinforce the pants.  Add some knee pads and shin guards- on both sides of the shins- and see if you can protect the thighs somehow. 

As for shirts, pick something long-sleeved that’s made of comfortable, durable materials.  I’m not making any recommendations here which might surprise you.  The reason I’m not is because the shirt doesn’t really matter.  You will be wearing a Kevlar vest over top of it and that is what will provide you the necessary protection.  If it can stop bullets and knives, it should certainly stop zombie bites.  It’s good enough for SWAT, the Army, mercenaries and bomb squads so that makes it good enough for me.  Maybe you think that a heavy bulletproof vest isn’t worth the effort and that it will slow you down too much.  All I have in response that that sentiment is “It’s been nice knowing you.  See you on the other side.” 

Besides, you don’t have to wear it 24/7.  If you have properly followed the “Fortify” and “Organize” steps, you don’t have to stay in battle mode all the time.  You can take things off while sleeping or showering or relaxing.  Now I would still keep everything nearby for quick access and I would still always carry a weapon with me, but I wouldn’t sleep in Kevlar or go to the bathroom in it.  After a while though, you will probably build up some vest stamina and it will be no big deal wearing it for extended periods of time.  Oh, and a word of advice about the vest.  Don’t take it off after you’ve survived being shot or just escaped a pack of zombies.  There are always more zombies and more bullets out there.  I keep waiting to see a cop movie where the hero dramatically removes his vest after surviving an attack and he gets shot again a few minutes later.  As for a utility belt, I’ve found them to be a little cumbersome.  It’s hard to run with them and it is uncomfortable crawling around on the ground with an ammo clip or shovel digging into my kidney.  I’d rather go with a backpack or lots of pockets on my pants and shirt.  Or maybe a bandolier because they look so cool.  Now don’t forget to add some elbow pads and arm guards too.  Some simple plastic things would work to provide protection when crawling under cars or through fields in order to avoid groups of stationery zombies.

Now for the final piece of clothing- head protection.  Nothing sucks more than someone crunching on your skull, trying to get at your grey matter.  Really, nothing does.  Being struck by lightning?  Not all that bad- it happens very quickly and then you are either dead or have an amazing story.  Freezing to death?  That’s just going to sleep and not waking up and everyone loves sleeping.  Being attacked by a gang in prison?  At least you can fight back.  Falling from a tall building?  That’s not too bad except for the end part and you might not even feel your femur driving into your chest before your brain gets squished.  Well, that’s kind of gross and painful sounding.  Being buried alive in a casket?  Okay, this one actually freaks me out.  You can’t fight against anything.  At least with someone trying to eat your brain, you can try to fend them off but being immobilized underground until you run out of oxygen?  Shudder!!! 

Geesh, I’m uncovering new fears.  That’s not supposed to happen.  This post is supposed to be a cathartic exercise.  Where was I?  Oh yeah- head protection. Skull crunching.  So, this is an area where you have several options.  Since zombies don’t know how to shoot guns, you don’t necessarily need a Kevlar or bulletproof helmet.  You just need something strong enough to resist bites and scrapping nails and sudden impacts against a wall or on the ground.  You can go with a baseball batting helmet, an Army infantry helmet, a hockey mask, or anything else that strikes your fancy.  I would recommend something that allows lots of peripheral vision but also protects you from blood spew or regurgitated ooze.  I’d probably go with a SWAT style helmet- it protects your head on all sides but the clear shield in front allows you see all around you while still keeping out potentially infected blood spatter. 

My only remaining concern is the neck.  None of the equipment I’ve mentioned so far protects the neck.  In medieval times, knights wore suits of armor that had pieces of metal projecting up from around the neck area so that an opponent couldn’t accidentally sever their head when a sword blow to the shoulders glanced off their armor. I don’t think the SWAT helmets extend all the way down to the neck (and since the movie “S.W.A.T.” sucks, I don’t want to rewatch it just to verify that.)  Wearing a turtleneck isn’t that viable either.  It is better than bare skin but it probably won’t stop someone trying to bite your neck.  Plus you’ll get really warm really quickly, especially since zombie incidents only seem to take place in urban or arid areas.  They never take place in wintery conditions (with the sole exceptions of “Dead Snow”) where a turtleneck would be advisable as well as stylish.  So I’m open to suggestions in this area.  Does anyone have a good idea for guarding your neck?  If so, please let me know.  Hopefully I will be able to blow away every dangerous thing from long distance and not have to worry about risking my neck but still I’d like to be properly suited up if the situation arises.        

10)  Secrets- What does this one mean?  I can’t tell you- it’s a secret.  If I told you… it might kill me.  Telling you every one of my secrets for surviving the zomb-pocalypse means that you would have an equal chance of staying alive and some fluke accident might sway things in your favor instead of mine.  Thus, I’ll keep some survival tips for myself.  I won’t discuss military tactics or mention that it might be a good idea to find a big boat to hide away on since zombies don’t seem to be able to swim, just walk on the bottom beneath the water (like in Land Of The Dead and Shock Waves).  There are a few more thoughts I will share with you though.

I’m not going to ask you to leave me behind if I have trouble keeping up.  I’m not going to volunteer to stay behind and explode a grenade in the midst of a pack of zombies descending on me so you can make your escape.  I will not go back for someone who is bitten or likely to be dead.  That has never turned out well (until Resident Evil: After Life pulled off a major twist ending.)  I will not shoot myself in the head if I’ve been infected by a zombie bite.  You will have to hold me down and try to take me out because I will go down hard.  This whole thing has been about survival so why would I voluntarily let anyone kill me?  If I wanted to go out as a “suicide by zombie”, I would have done so at the start of it all, before everyone I loved got eaten.  If you’ve ever seen the ending of the movie The Mist, you know that you should never give up, that giving in to despair can result in awfully cruel irony.  Stay strong.  Always.

So that is my plan for staying alive when the zombie apocalypse hits.  You might be scoffing and thinking this strategic exercise is a waste of time.  Okay, maybe the zombie plague will never happen and I won’t have to worry about flesh eaters roaming the landscape.  What if I had talked about hurricanes instead of zombies?  All of my ideas also work when you are in the midst of storm winds and flooding.  You still should have stockpiled supplies, fortified your house from the wind, figured out your exits if the house gets damaged, decided on a game plan before the emergency (Leave town or hunker down?) and once it is over and the power is out and the rivers are flooding (Wait for help or head to rescue stations?).  Weapons are still a good idea and so is dressing appropriately.  Imagine how awesome it would feel if you had a pair of waders sitting around the house in that situation?

About the only thing that doesn’t apply is stripping although that would keep you occupied while you wait for a rescue team to arrive.  Heck, last week my area was hit by a 5.9 magnitude earthquake AND a Category 2 hurricane.  I’m still at risk for a nuclear attack on Washington DC, from melting ice caps, from massive snowfalls or flooding riverbanks.  Violent gangs roam certain parts of town.  I might be targeted by a crazy stalker (A male one, I mean.  I’d welcome a female stalker since I like semi-crazy chicks.)  Anything can happen.  You have to think of all possible scenarios in life and find the right strategy for each of them.  Doing this ahead of time will save you from overlooking something important.  The worst case scenario is that you’ve wasted some time planning for something that never happens.  Peace of mind is worth that wasted time.  It can even act as impromptu therapy. 

Flipping through channels right now, I came across an Australian horror movie called Triangle and heard a character say “Apparently, bad dreams can cure you of real life stress.  And so can champagne.” I doubt things will turn out well for this character but the idea is reasonable.  During this whole month while I’ve been tinkering with my thoughts about zombies, you would think I’d dream about them more frequently since the topic is on my mind.  That hasn’t been the case.  I’ve dreamt about poker and work and old friends and all sorts of things but not zombies.  Maybe that will change tonight or tomorrow but so far discussing my fears has seemed to make them dissipate.  Connecting my real life stressors to their dream manifestations allows me to recognize what is bothering me and resolve it in my dreams.  Coming up with a plan of action for an unlikely scenarios makes me feel like I have some control over my life.  Take a minute to Google “surviving a zombie apocalypse” and seeing how many hits you get.  Other people understand this urge too.  When you think about it, that’s what zombie movies are all about- metaphors for people’s fear of war, indiscriminate consumerism, aging, violence, declining civility, repressed anger and anything else you can think of. 

Getting rid of fear is a good thing and doing it by smashing and shooting things feels even better.  Why do you think videogames are so popular, particularly the combat and zombie ones?  After all, Resident Evil started out as a videogame.  Then it spawned four movies, with another on the way, and people reacted to the terrifying visualization of their fears being overcome by a kick-ass babe, one with guns, a plan, organizational skills and a knack for finding exits just in time.  Her wardrobe choices left something to be desired at first (a red dress and combat boots?  Really?), but otherwise she embodies my rules.  The zombie movies brought some of my fears to the surface and confronting them in my dreams helped me get recognize them and try to address them.  Now I just have to deal with the real world.  And math.

Actual Books

The last part of an answer clicked into place last week while I was eating at a restaurant that was way out of my league. The reason I knew it was out of my league was because the waiter came over to let us smell the truffles in case we were thinking of ordering them as part of our meal. Now if I’m ordering wine, I know what I should do when given the opportunity to smell the wine. I’m supposed to sniff inside the wine glass to absorb the bouquet and make comments about how oak-y or fruity the wine is and how it has hints of rose petal or notes of black currant. I am completely at a loss though as to what I should do when a waiter thrusts a small bowl under my nose and suggests I smell the truffle root cradled on a bed of pebbles in the bowl. What smell should I be searching for? Is a good truffle one that has an earthy, root-y smell? A savory vegetable quality with hints of pig snout? I just don’t know. Then we are informed that if we want the truffle, shaved in thin slices at our table, it will be $55 a serving. That was when I knew I was a bumpkin who wandered into a high-class Italian restaurant. That didn’t stop me from staying to enjoy a meal though. In fact, I wasn’t even the only one of our group to feel slightly discombobulated. All four of us saw something on the menu that made us ask, “What is that?” Leona knew a couple of the items but still was stumped on some others. Before we made our selections, we put the waiter through several rounds of “What is this thing here?” Eventually we got the menu decoded and everyone got something that sounded tasty. I opted for the penne pasta with lobster meat and an encrusted pecan salad to start, partially because I knew what all the words meant. Of course the salad was 6 leaves of Bibb lettuce next to a smear of dressing, a slice of goat cheese and a sprinkle of pecan pieces, thus confirming the pedigree of the restaurant.

It might sound like I’m mocking the Villa Mozart, which I am not, not really. Everything was delicious and was meant to be savored for its’ distinct and subtle tastes. I would highly recommend the place even if you don’t have a discerning palate. It was that good and aside from the truffles, the prices were reasonable. During our delicious meal, Leona, David, Elizabeth and I conversed about various things. Since just the day before I had been asking someone about books that made an impact on them as a kid, I thought I would bring up the topic in this group because we were all voracious readers. I wondered what books had stuck in their memories since childhood. Did they read the “typical” books that kids read? Did they read for fun or for knowledge? It turns out that the answers were as diverse as the group. Leona couldn’t remember too much of what she’d read as a kid but remembered reading Nancy Drew books while she was in high school. David read Conan The Barbarian at the same time he was reading other books way beyond his grade level. Elizabeth was reading Oscar Wilde even though she didn’t get all the references and innuendos the first few times she read him. She also mentioned that she would read whatever happened to be on the bookshelves of the place where she was house-sitting. That’s when the last part of the answer slid into place in my brain.

The question had been there for a while. It was a simple “What if” kind of question. How would I feel if books disappeared? I mean the actual physical book itself, not the words themselves conveyed in some other medium. Newspapers are going extinct before our eyes. News is still being produced but it is getting to people through channels other than black ink on large pieces of paper thrown on your doorstep or flower bed every morning. People are getting their news from the online versions of newspapers and from television and Wikipedia and, God help us, from Twitter and Facebook. The page count for newspapers has shrunk, advertising revenue is way down and subscriptions and circulation totals are quickly declining. The same type of scenario has happened in the music industry and now the beginnings of that trend are appearing in the book world. If the book itself went away, how would I feel since I could still get the words elsewhere? The stories, characters and plots would remain intact and I could delve into them on my Kindle or my Nook or my iPhone or my computer.

So far my stance has been one of opposition with a slight bitterness as well, whether I’m referring to newspapers or CDs or books. I like the idea of options. If I’m on the Metro heading to the National Zoo, I might want to read a magazine during the ride and then throw it out when I’m done. I don’t want to lug my Kindle along and have to haul it with me as I walk from the monkey house to the tiger pit to the aviary to whatever you call the elephant’s patch of dirt. If I’m at work and want to get a bit of news to start the day, I’ll check online instead of buying a paper. If it is Sunday though, I want to spread out all those pages on the tabletop and look through the coupons and comics and editorials and movie reviews and columns while I eat breakfast. Pancake syrup and computers don’t go well together. If I’m listening to music on the way into work, having it come through the XM satellite radio is fine. I also like putting a bunch of MP3s on a flash drive and taking them over to where I’m going to play poker. Sometime though, I want to look at the lyrics while the music plays. I want to check out the album cover and see if I missed a clue “proving” Paul really is dead. If I’m soaking in the bathtub, I want to hold a paperback book in my hands- I don’t want a computer precariously perched on my chest. Especially if it is a bubble bath, although since I’m a guy I certainly wouldn’t be taking a bubble bath. Nope. Some chick might be though and it would be even more dangerous for her to delicately balance a computer on her possibly ample, and therefore unlevel, chest. Options are good.

That last piece of the answer that clicked in my head during dinner was the realization that holding something in my hand, something that wasn’t ephemeral, allowed me to create a sense of community and sharing. A common theme in those examples of tangible products I just mentioned is how they could all involve sharing. If I’m done with my magazine as I head to the monkey house (or “home” as some wise-ass might suggest), I can give it to you and you can read it to see what Lindsey Lohan has been up to. If you like the out-of-print Johnette Napolitano CD I’m playing, I can loan it to you. When I’m done with the book I took with me on the camping trip, I can give it to someone else who was eager to read the latest Dan Brown book but can’t afford to shell out $10 for the Kindle e-version because they have been laid off from their job at the auto factory so they don’t even own a Kindle. If I only had e-versions of all these items, that makes a difference. I’m not going to lend you my e-book reader because then how will I be able to read something? I’m not going to buy a second one just so you can borrow one. I’m going to tell you to get your own and go download the book or magazine. If you liked a song I was playing I suppose I could send you the MP3 file but then I’d have to log onto the computer, start an email and then send it to you for you to open and load onto your device. If our marriage is a bit shaky, poring over the Sunday paper’s crossword together might be a good icebreaker activity for the day that would not work if each of us were in separate rooms doing it online.

If I happen to be at a party or, more likely, visiting someone’s house (because I’m shy- large groups of strangers scare me) I always find myself looking at the bookshelves or CD racks to see what they are into. If I see books I like, I know I’m probably in the company of a kindred spirit. I might start a conversation with them about certain books or ask their thoughts about something discussed in one of them. After I saw a copy of Into Thin Air on someone’s bookshelf, I ended up reading it and it started a year-long ongoing conversation with someone as we talked about Mt. Everest or new mountaineering books or new theories about what happened to George Mallory (and then we found out the likely- and sad- answer when we hit the Mallory exhibit at the National Geographic Museum.) If I see an unknown artist among a bunch of CDs I know and like, I’ll probably give the band a try or at least put it on the stereo at the party/house-visit. These are all things that build bonds between people. Shared interests allow you to connect quickly. I don’t think, however, a host would be that eager to make friends with me if I went over to their computer, logged on and starting looking through their files to see what music or books they have on their hard drive. I’m also not going to take their cell phone out their pocket and start scrolling through it to see what pictures or songs are on it. Instead, I’ll have to resort to commenting on their rug or saying how nice their wallpaper is. I don’t know anything about rugs. They are a functional item that you wipe your feet on or, if you have too much money, you hang them on a wall. In fact, if we did start talking about rugs or wallpaper for any length of time my leg would start to twitch and I’d be glancing towards the bar. Please keep your bookshelves! I don’t want to talk about rugs at a party. I want to check out the titles on the book spines, look at the dust jacket’s cover, maybe even look over your DVDs. Just no wallpaper conversations or I’ll have to slap you.

Also CD, much less LP, album cover art is dead and book dust jackets will soon join them. E-book readers aren’t even in color right now and they don’t currently have the resolution necessary to replace drawings, pictures or art that might appear in illustrated books. I have several copies of some James Bond books because whenever I see one that has a different cover on it and it is cheap enough, I’ll pick it up. Sometimes I pull out the books just to look at the covers. David and I both recalled being kids and reading an illustrated edition of The Swiss Family Robinson. There were full-color pictures in the books and even definitions, drawings and other marginalia on the sides of the pages. That was the first book I have a conscious memory of. It’s also the first (and only?) book that my father read to me. It was a book, and a memory, that had a major impact on my childhood- how I perceived things and what I looked for in a story. Sharing an actual product helps build a sense of community and togetherness that you can’t get when you sit in your room, with your headphones on, staring at a computer screen.

That’s why I have the bitterness about the possible disappearance of books and other products. I don’t like having an option taken away from me. I feel like I’m losing some of my rights as a consumer. Heck, a few months back, Amazon even went into the Kindle readers and withdrew a book they thought they didn’t have the copyright to. That wouldn’t have happened if it were a physical book sitting on my shelf. Suppose your computer crashes? You’ve lost that product and have to buy it again. I guess you could back it up on another system but some people aren’t that conscientious. My brother-in-law has four backups in multiple locations across the country but that’s just him. I only have one external hard drive back up and it’s in the same place as my computer. A house fire would screw me. Lots of people don’t even save a long document or email they are working on until they finish writing it. I learned that lesson the first time a storm knocked out the power to our office but invariably when the power goes out, someone screams, “I just lost everything I was working on!” Actually they shriek it like a 12-year old girl who didn’t get Jonas Brothers tickets which just makes it even more amusing to me as I sit in the dark silently laughing to myself about those novices.

Luckily, hard drive crashes don’t happen that often and house fires are even less frequent than that so my actual books will still be around for a good long while. Also, if the power goes out because of a storm or a terrorist attack or because a zombie plaque wiped out the staff at the power plant, I can still read at home by candlelight or in the sunlight while I’m sitting in the park. (Although if it is a zombie plaque, I probably won’t go to the park.) I can take a magazine to the beach, or on the camping trip. My book will join me in the bathtub. If it is a 700-page hardcover Harry Potter book, I can even use it to cave in the head of some zombies when they finally break past my barricaded door. Can an iPhone be used as a weapon? I don’t think so. Furthermore, any of those tree-huggers who argue that real books kill trees never mention how much environmental damage is done while generating the electricity that keeps computers and electronic equipment running. There is no such thing as an electricity tree. The power has to come from somewhere. Coal is being burned, oil is consumed, dams and power plants are built. Power is expended somehow, regardless of the medium you use. Once a book is printed though, it is around for a long time. Everyone has books from decades ago. Books get been passed around for others to enjoy. When you are tired of a book, you can give it to someone else. You can donate it to a library or charity. Maybe it’s a rare comic book so you can sell it to a collector. The worst case scenario for a book is that you throw it in the trash and take it to the dump where is rejoins the environment because it is biodegradable. Computers aren’t. You can mulch your garden with John Grisham but not with your MP3 player. In some cases, books have even outlasted the trees they came from. The Guttenberg bible is one of the rarest books in the world because it was one of the first books ever printed on a printing press but there are still copies in existence. That was more than 400 years ago. Do you think those particular trees would still be around if they hadn’t been turned into bibles? Nope. Not unless Guttenberg was using sequoia paper and redwood pulp.

So that random comment, while I was at the Italian restaurant trying to decide if the vase of sticklike objects the waiter set on the table was edible, helped me figure out my stance on the benefits of technology. I like technology, don’t get me wrong. I’m waiting for the day when walls are in fact really ginormous (a real word now- it was added to the Oxford dictionary last year) screens and I can watch TV on the kitchen wall when I cook. I want to be soaking in the bathtub and read a “book” that is displayed in a huge font on the wall underneath the showerhead. I want music to surround me as I sit on the sofa and I can read the lyrics on one wall while another one shows the corresponding video and another shows pictures from the album cover and I control it all with a wave of my hand. Oh and I can’t wait for the day when someone invents a radio that floats alongside me as I walk around the neighborhood so I don’t have to carry it along or even wear headphones. See, I want my media, my connections, my devices to be 100% available wherever I am. Until this happens, I want options. I don’t want to be dependent on electricity in order to consume ideas and stories and music. I don’t want to get electrocuted while using it in watery places. I don’t want it to crash in the middle of using it. I want to share it with others. I want to talk about it. I want to see it and be able to touch it if I so desire. I want it to be permanent. I like the tactile feeling of books. I like the smell of the paper and the artistry of the pictures and the covers. I like being able to squash a bug with my magazine. I like cutting a comic out of a newspaper and posting it on the fridge. I like versatility and options. You can grasp your cold, nondescript, plastic Kindle in your hand if you like. I’ll even do it too sometimes. All I ask is that I can also hold an actual book in my hand if I want to. The ideal technological world in my head is nowhere near reality at this moment so don’t take away any of my current choices until you can replace them with something better.

Now if you will excuse me, all this talk of hypothetical bathtub soaks with a good book has actually made me want to do it for real. From the way I kept bringing it up, you’d think it was something I did everyday. In truth, it’s one of those pleasures I think of frequently but don’t actually do that often. I just like the concept of a warm, soapy bath and a good book. While I’m pruning up in the tub, I will contemplate the next big question. Were those sticklike things in the vase really thin breadsticks or something else? I ate some and I still can’t be sure. Maybe the waiter was just too polite to tell us rubes that we ate the table’s centerpiece.

25 Random Thoughts Or Facts About Me

Last month I got a slew of Facebook notes that people had tagged me in a note about “25 Random Things About Me”. I didn’t respond right away because I didn’t want to help perpetuate a viral lemming, to use the term a friend of mine applies to all types of chain/spam/forwarded email, since I have done so a couple times in the past to certain people’s annoyance. However, once that very same friend sent me the note, I decided to jump on the band wagon too, albeit after it had left the station and no one cares any more, if I may mix metaphors and Phil Collins lyrics. To freshen up the concept though, I decided to make it a posting to my blog where I could go into a bit more depth on each item. Of course that doesn’t mean I’m not going to tag you back, I just don’t expect you to forward it to anyone else. Not even if someone might die if you don’t pass it along to 25 other people! (Which actually might happen, the way my luck has been going lately. I don’t like the spectre of death noticing me, even peripherally.)

1: Let start somewhat basic. Not quite as basic as what my name is, because if you don’t know that already then you must be on the wrong site and if so, how on earth did you wind up here? (If I do a search on the internet, I can’t even find my own site.) Let’s start with my favorite colors. Yeah, I’m a guy but blue is not my favorite color. It’s my second and eighth favorite color. My very favorite color is emerald green. I have no idea why. I think part of it may be because my birth month jewel is the emerald. Another part of the attraction is that the emerald is cut to reflect light, similar to a diamond, but that also adds variation to the green color so that some parts of the emerald seem light green while others are a darker, more mysterious green that is still somehow optimistic. So when I see an emerald green color, it reminds me of the gemstone. I sort of lump hunter green in with emerald green because no (basically) two-dimensional object like a shirt or piece of paper can exactly capture the facets of a gemstone so hunter green is a close approximation of the dark angles of an emerald. That’s the same reason my second favorite color is midnight blue- it reminds of the moody, dark color of a sapphire although midnight blue is not as optimistic as emerald green. It’s a bit more passionate and troubled. My third favorite color is lilac. It’s like purple, my fourth favorite color, but with a friendlier attitude and I don’t look as pretentiously regal wearing it. Only Prince can pull off purple on a regular basis. Lilac is easier to do.

Next on my list is pastel green, then pastel yellow and then any other pastel, like blue, orange, pink, etc… Pastels remind me of spring, and warmth and Easter and they evoke happy feelings. I’ve never been harmed by anything pastel colored or by anyone wearing pastels whereas basic “boy” blue is a different story. After those comes all the other colors- sunshine yellow, typical blue, bright red, burnt orange, etc… I’m not sure where I stand on black however. That is the absence of color though (or it’s all colors depending on who you ask.) Black looks cool, and I have many black clothes and objects but don’t think I consider it a favorite color per se. I have a different issue with electric pink (and most electric colors are favored over their basic, non-pastel color counterparts) in that it is an enjoyable color, but it isn’t very practical. You shouldn’t buy furniture in that color, electric pink clothes take a lot of coordinating to work well (have you ever seen me wear my pink shoelaces?), and it isn’t an easy color to use as a computer font. So there you have it- more discussion of color than you’ve had since 5th grade art class.

2: Next time you go to see a play or a musical, try playing the Law & Order game like my friends and I do when we see a show. This is what you do: Once you take your seat, open up the show’s “Playbill” and take a look at the cast’s credits. Invariably some of the cast members will list an episode of Law & Order on their performance credits. For instance, from last month’s play A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee, there are six cast members in the production. The first one- Kathleen Chalfant- lists End Game, which she won an Obie Award for, the Broadway appearance of Angels In America, which gave her a Tony Award nomination and then continues on with a whole paragraph of other plays and television appearances including one for Law & Order. The next person lists his credits including his roles on “Law & Order(s)”. The third actor has only one television credit in her list and it’s for Law & Order. No L&O for the fourth person and none for the fifth although he does list a role on Homicide. The sixth did Law & Order and L&O: Criminal Intent. So more than 60% of the cast appeared on a famous cop show. The first play where we were cognizant of this fact, we thought it was an inside joke by the cast but after we started checking and saw that it was in every Playbill, we realized it was a badge of honor to be on the show. That’s when we started making guesses as to how many of the cast members will have it in their bios. It’s an amusing way to spend a few minutes before the curtain goes up. It may be an East coast thing though. I don’t know if any of you West Coast folks can play since Law & Order is set in New York and it’s a lot easier for people here to get to the Big Apple. You all may have to find a different version, like the CSI Game.

3: I often wonder why people who think they are “green” or businesses who try to promote green-ness miss so many opportunities to truly do something about pollution, waste and the environment. Let’s just look at grocery stores as an example. For the last two decades I’ve been miffed about the switch from paper bags to plastic bags. I think the only reason plastic became the standard is because no one could figure out a way to keep the handles on paper bags from tearing off. Don’t plastic bags take several hundred years to decompose, whereas a paper bag is gone in a few years? Or a few seconds if you carry something home in one during a rainstorm? If I want to eat healthy, I’ll get a salad which should be a good thing because it’s an (hopefully) all-natural product but then what do most grocery stores provide for you to put that salad in? Hard plastic containers or Styrofoam, both of which are horrible for the environment. There aren’t any alternatives either because I’m certain that if I tried to bring in my own container or reuse one of theirs, they wouldn’t let me because of some state or federal law worrying about if the container is unsanitary.

Bottled water- another thing I’ve been irritated by for two decades. You pay money for water in a non-biodegradable container. Why not install drinking fountains around town instead? Because the water is bad? Of course it is- you have factories spewing out waste so they can make plastic bottles. Catch 22. All the packaging in grocery stores- plastic. What ever happened to metal or waxed paper? Yeah, I know food would go stale quicker, but that’s a lifestyle choice not an environmental argument. Gift cards? Plastic shopping baskets? Shrinkwrap? Styrofoam trays for fish? Non-local produce trucked in from another country? (Although I really like my Chilean grapes at Safeway so that’s a bit hypocritical of me.) I question how much people are really willing to sacrifice in order to call themselves green. Heck, I still remember years ago when Adam and Michelle were turned away from the newspaper recycling location because they had “too many newspapers already and couldn’t accept anymore.” We aren’t equipped to really go green in a way that makes a difference and even if we were, I’m not sure people would buy into the concept because it would affect their lifestyle too much. Sorry to say it but just buying a hybrid car doesn’t qualify you as being a greenie. You are destroying the forest while saving a tree.

4: I have been to 34 states and 19 countries. Part of that is because I was a military brat and part is because I love to travel and have done a lot of it in the last 8 years. As a kid, I lived in Florida, Michigan, Germany and Virginia, plus often visited my grandparents in Sweden. In the last few years, I’ve done road trips to the Pacific Northwest, the South, the New England states, Texas and rural Virginia plus I did some overseas trips like Iceland, Russia and a Danube River cruise. The states I have not yet been to, either as a passenger in the car with my parents when I was young or as an adult taking a trip, are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming. The one’s I’m most eager to knock off the pending list are Hawaii, Wyoming, Arizona, Utah and North Dakota because they promise to have some interesting sites once I get there. Of the states I have been, I’m pretty enamored of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maine and Washington (State). Virginia appeals to me because I love variety in my landscapes. Virginia has a coastline, flat land, hills and mountains. It has temperate weather and you actually experience all four seasons. The cities and towns have variety too- small towns in rural parts and bigger cities like Richmond, Alexandria and DC- which I consider as part of Virginia. Heck, we used to own it in colonial times before it was annexed. This is the same reason I like Pennsylvania- variety of landscape and variety of city sizes although there aren’t as many memories from that state since I haven’t lived there 35 years like I have with Virginia. Maine and Washington State I like because of the rugged terrain. I love forested mountains, cliffs, big hills and all wooded areas. When I retire, I want to live on a wooded mountain about 20 minutes from a big city. There are some other states that I think would like if I had a chance to spend more time exploring different parts of them and seeing more than what I’ve seen so far. These states are New York, California, North Carolina, Michigan and New Hampshire/Vermont (They should just combine the two states, just like Maryland should absorb Delaware).

The countries I have been to are: the Bahamas (Nassau), Canada- British Columbia, Canada- Ontario, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Iceland, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Hungary. My favorites have been… all of them. I can’t think of one I wouldn’t want to go back to. Rome is probably tops on my list of places to return to soon, before it gets radically commercialized. That’s part of what I liked about the Danube cruise- I saw places that were still unintentionally quaint. They weren’t commercialized or designed to be quaint. After Rome comes Germany. For a place that is part of my personal background, I don’t know enough about it. Places I want to get to are pretty much everywhere I’ve never been. I’ve only been to three of the seven continents, assuming I can fudge things and consider Russia to be part of Asia. Any place in Europe is a definite visit, Australia and New Zealand absolutely, some places in Asia like China, Hong Kong or Japan, Antarctica yes, parts of Africa, parts of South America, more of Canada and maybe Costa Rica or Mexico in Central America. Anyone interested in going someplace, let me know- as long as your snoring isn’t as bad as my roommates on the Danube trip.

5: I’m a multi-billionaire. Granted, it is in Serbian dinars but I still have money totaling more than a billion units of a currency. While on my Danube River cruise, we stopped in Belgrade. Our guide told us that the currency had been so badly devalued during Serbian-Croatian war that Serbia actually had a 500,000,000,000 note. It has since been phased out of existence but street vendors sell the old notes for about $3 or 3 Euros. Naturally I bought one from an old lady selling them on the corner. I only had a US $20 bill but she could make change. As I left with my bill and my change I realized she had only given me back $14. I almost went back to argue with her but then figured what the heck. I was a billionaire. I could afford to be generous with a street hustler.

6: I’ve been lucky or unlucky about injuring myself, depending on how you look at it. I’ve broken my wrist, but since it happened when I jumped off a moving car, it could have been much worse. I’ve had pencil tips broken off in my hand, I’ve been kicked in the head, had a Lincoln log stuck down my throat, been shot at with a BB gun, been whacked upside the head with a Flying Ginny and simultaneously had mono, anemia and jaundice. These ailments resulted in stitches, medication and tears but nothing worse than that which I would consider a lucky outcome. I’ve also had several food injuries, including my latest which is a soup injury. Suffice to say, styrofoam does not hold up well to lengthy microwaving and I have the blistered skin to prove it. I’ve sliced off part of my thumb with a cheese slicer, lost a tooth to a gummi bear, branded myself pulling a cake out of the oven and choked on rice. That doesn’t even include the remote controls I’ve damaged with spatter from oranges or the amount of liquid I’ve sweated out eating curry and other spicy foods. The food injuries at least had the benefit of occurring while enjoying food, unlike regular injuries, but I wonder what it means when my food injuries almost outnumber my normal personal injuries.

7: Icing is made with sugar. I mean that as a personal statement, not a question of fact. Some people think that the whipped, pseudo-sweet cream some places put on a cake is icing, but it’s not. Icing is sugar. I don’t know what the necessary proportions of sugar, butter and egg are but if I lick the icing off the top of a cupcake and it reminds me of whipped cream, it has been made wrong. Also, icing goes great on any pastry- brownies, cookies, cakes, doughnuts, etc…

8: I started a blog: http://richardsrantingandramblings.blogspot.com/ Check it out if you like. I’d love to hear any feedback or suggestions.

9: I’m a moderate sports guy. I don’t get obsessed with sports because there are too many other activities that are worth engaging in to be spending all my time as a sports spectator. When I do watch, I like seeing tennis & soccer in general, and certain teams in the NFL and NBA. I always watch the tennis Major tournaments and pretty much any other tournament that is televised. I watch MLS soccer (i.e. US teams) and World cup games and qualifiers. If I tried to follow any other soccer league I’d have no time for anything else. I watch all the Utah Jazz NBA games plus whoever is in the playoffs and for the NFL, in the background I’ll watch whatever is on while I’m doing something else. If it is a Colts or Redskins game, I’ll specifically watch them. I love underdogs which is why I root for the Texans and Cardinals, which turned out well this year. I don’t watch hockey (sorry, Trevor) or baseball unless it is the playoffs. I’ll watch Nascar if it is the last 5 laps.

10: Mormor, my grandmother in Sweden, died last month. She hadn’t been feeling well and was staying in bed a lot. At one point, she was talking to my mom and told her she felt too weak to get up and go to the bathroom. That’s when my mom insisted that she call an ambulance and go to a hospital. Surprisingly, she did that even though she had always been a bit of a “rugged individualist”, to use an American expression. My mom called to tell me this and then a few days later called to say that Mormor was getting better, that she was feeling a lot stronger. A few days after that, she called and said that Mormor had died. That really took me by surprise. Mormor had always been there for me. She was part of my mental foundation. Even if I didn’t see her on a daily basis, I knew she was there in Sweden thinking of me. It made me feel good knowing that. Some of my most cherished memories are traveling to Sweden and looking at the airport waiting area and seeing Mormor and Morfar up in the observation area waiting for us to get thru customs. In the last dozen years, after Morfar had passed away, Mom and I would go visit and take the train into town rather than have Mormor come get us. Still, as we walked down the street towards her apartment, I would look at her kitchen window and see her standing there, keeping an eye out for us. She was waiting because she was excited to see us. It was so nice knowing that there was always somebody waiting for me, with unconditional love and acceptance. No matter what, Mormor loved me and I could count on her being there for me whenever I looked for her. Now she won’t be there anymore. She won’t see me this spring, when I had planned to visit with Mom. She won’t see me 40 pounds lighter than before. She won’t get to see my sister’s son in person- her first great grandson. She won’t see me get married or have kids either. She won’t even see the next spring season, which always made her happy. She liked the nicer weather and growing some flowers in her garden or her window box. I’m not going to get any more wonderful Christmas cards from her. No more birthday cards with some money inside the envelope. No more trips to Falkoping, no more home cooked Swedish meals, no more black & white checkerboard cookies, no more beautifully decorated rooms, no more Christmas morning phone calls. No more Morfar, no more Mormor. The world just got a lot lonelier.

11: I have a Slurpee addiction but I’ve mostly weaned myself off of it by creating and following a Slurpee 12-step program.

12: I want to lose 16.5 pounds. Within the last two years, I’ve lost 45 pounds altogether and then sort of leveled off around 175 pounds. Since the beginning of February though I’ve gained back eight of those pounds. I don’t think it had any connection to Mormor passing away (although I didn’t do much in Sweden except pack up her belongings and eat stuff that was bad for me). It’s more that in the last couple of months I’ve been succumbing to my main weaknesses- sugar and bread. I can feel the fat accumulating again. My jawline is becoming less defined, I can pinch extra flesh on my hips and thighs and I’m feeling more sluggish. That’s why I want to get start dropping weight again, get back on a healthy eating cycle and start exercising more often. My preliminary goal is to hit 160 pounds and then level off at 165 and stay there for good. Sugar and sweet products will be hard to give up now that I’ve been indulging again (like with my kick in Sweden with the gummi/pectin raspberry racecars) but it’s doable if I can shake off the habit and stay sugarless for a week or two. Bread will be the tough one though. I’m always in the mood for bread. Bread is my favorite food. I’ll keep trying though. I have at least started a new rule about bread- don’t waste calories with bad bread. If I’m going to be bad and eat bread, it has to be good. No Wonderbread type bread, no soggy sandwiches, no mediocre breadbaskets. I’m hoping by summer, I will have achieved my goal. Wish me luck (and hide the M&Ms.)

13: I have an absurd fear of zombies. Unlike a UFO encounter, no one you know has ever claimed to see the undead walking around trying to eat them. Not even the National Enquirer has tried to claim they are out there. So I know they don’t really exist, yet I’m still terrified of them. As a kid, I used to be scared of the normal things- monsters in the closest, vampires, crazy burglars, escaped murderers. I didn’t even really pay attention to zombies until the 1980’s when a wave of remakes and sequels started popping up. By that time, I was watching television and going to movie theatres so I saw all the ads and previews for things like the remake of “Night Of The Living Dead” and especially “Return Of The Living Dead”. Seeing the decomposing creatures shuffling towards me on screen and muttering something about eating my brains totally freaked me out. Yes, they were slow and easily avoided, unlike say a werewolf, but they were relentless. You could wait until daylight and be safe from Dracula but not with these things. They are always there- you didn’t dare rest or relax your guard for a second. And they liked to congregate so what was only one annoying, easily handled creature in the morning becomes a dangerous horde by nightfall. Plus by this time I was aware of how much I hated irrational thought. I dislike being around people who were guided solely by their id or who refuse to listen to reasonable explanations and logical arguments. Doesn’t that sound exactly like someone who’s undead? All they do is look to sate their appetites and they won’t be swayed by anything you say, unless you say it “metaphorically”, like with a shotgun blast to their head.

For about fifteen years, this fear of zombies slowly built up as new movies kept coming out. It went from being a non-existent fear to an all-consuming one, if you’ll pardon the pun. Sometime in the mid 1990’s, I decided to confront my fear head-on. I would watch a couple of zombie movies so I could see how ridiculous they were and how unbelievable the creatures were. Big mistake. It scared the crap out of me even more. Since then if I walk around the house in the dark, I don’t watch out for Freddy Kruguer or Jason, I listen for moaning noises or the tell-tell sound of shuffling feet. Resident Evil is the one that pushed me over the edge. It moved me from passive fear to active engagement in the absurdity. That’s when I started watching every zombie movie I came across, so I could learn how to protect myself. When I look out the window, I make sure there are no corpses staggering around before I go outside. If I pass a doorway, I look to see who, or what, is in the room. I always make sure my door is locked behind me as soon as I go inside. I look in the shower and closets before going to bed. When I drive to work in the morning, I scope out the houses and buildings around me to see which ones look secure in case I have to quickly take shelter in the event of a zombie attack. Do they have high walls? Are there defendable points of entry? Are the windows narrow and high up? Is there food nearby? Are there likely to be lots of (undead) people nearby right away or will I have time to prepare? Is there a gun store or sporting goods shop in the vicinity? That’s why this fear is absurd. It affects how I view my surroundings even though I know it is ridiculous to think this way. On the plus side, I no longer worry about vampires, werewolves or escaped mental patients. I’m not sure that’s a good trade-off but it is too late to do anything about it now. I wish I could go back to the normal fears I had as a kid, like snakes, ghosts and Bigfoot. Oh, and if you get a concussion or bodily injury in my vicinity, I would suggest you don’t moan and shuffle in my direction looking for assistance. I’m likely to cut your head off, just as a preventative measure.

14: I always root for the underdog. I identify with the underdog, the loser, the person with something to prove. I won’t get into any psychological examinations about why this may be, but you would probably be safe in assuming I’ve always considered myself an underdog. Mostly though, it just makes for a more interesting experience. How many of you watch the Superbowl whole-heartedly when the score is 30-7 at halftime? Would Britney Spears’ comeback be as interesting to the world if she hadn’t totally screwed up her life? Would Rocky (or even Rudy) be as heart-warming a movie if the character succeeded right away? My friend John watched the first MLS soccer championship and counts it as one of the best sports experiences he’s ever seen. They staged a late game come-from-behind win that was electrifying. When I watched tennis back in the early 1990’s, I never rooted for Jim Courier because he always won, methodically grinding out win after win. Then Pete Sampras started doing the same thing but was more arrogant about it so there was no way I could root for him. That’s why I like Andre Agassi. He provided some competition for Sampras, brought him down to earth. Plus, Agassi learned about humility when he went from a top ten world-ranking to the 200’s. He was written off for two or three years and then decided to pull himself together. He played Challenger events, which is like Roger Clemens playing AA-League baseball. Andre then worked his way back into the top ten and went on to win more Grand Slam titles after he turned thirty then he did during the sports' “peak” age of the mid 20’s. I eventually started rooting for Courier once he lost a step and had to fight for wins, which he did in a dramatic fashion, especially for Davis Cup matches. You can also understand why I currently prefer Rafael Nadal to Roger Federer and I love seeing the Yankees lose. Being the underdog keeps you honest and makes you work on improving your skills.

15: I was in ROTC. All four years of school, I had to wear a camouflage outfit twice a week. I didn’t mind that part actually, nor did I mind the classroom stuff or most of the field exercises. What I disliked was the forced discipline. If a superior told me to do something, I would do it. I didn’t want to have to say “Sir, yes sir!” before doing it though. I felt ridiculous saluting people. I don’t want to sing Army songs while jogging. Standing at attention is very uncomfortable. Requiring my boots to be super shiny is silly, especially since during actual combat, you don’t want shiny surfaces giving away your position to enemy troops. Also, if you know my fondness for sleep, you can guess what I thought about the early morning P.T. sessions.

16: “Yeah, no”. A few years back, I noticed the prevalence of this phrase. I really wonder how it came into existence, because it is an absolute contradiction and makes no sense. Yet, you hear it all the time. If I asked someone “Did you like that movie?” and they didn’t like the movie, why would they start their response with “Yeah, no.” before explaining that “It kinda sucked. It wasn't very funny and I didn’t like the person who played the main character.” Clearly they didn’t like the movie and the answer to my question is assuredly “No.” Have people gotten so unwilling to say anything negative that they start any possible criticism with a positive sounding “Yeah” to salve the sensibilities of the recipient? I never hear anyone say “No, yeah.” It’s always the reverse. I thought no meant no. Doesn’t putting a yeah in front of it weaken the integrity of the word? What if I only hear the yeah part and I start doing something you didn’t want done? If I utter a phrase like “Would you like me to hit you with a hammer?” you probably should not let the word “Yeah” escape your lips for some time. Listen next time people are talking and see how often you hear this. I even heard it on TV last night, which means someone wrote that into a script deliberately. I’m amused and confused by how much I hear this contradiction in everyday conversation. (And I’ve even said it myself, although I chastise myself immediately after doing so- “Yeah, no- you shouldn’t be saying that. It’s, like, bad grammar, you know?”)

17: Along the same lines (I get annoyed by lots of things these days), have you ever gotten an email and seen this message: “In order to protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download of this picture from the Internet.”? Our spam blocker at work does it to messages all the time and it always irks me because it has nothing to do with privacy. Privacy is about being left to yourself and keeping other people from knowing things about you. What the spam filter did is protect my sensibilities, my delicate nature, from potentially obscene or disgusting pictures. I think Outlook is using the word “privacy” because they can’t think of a better metaphor for “filthy smut”. The only reasonable argument I can think of in Outlook’s favor is if someone is actually getting an email at work with embarrassing pictures. In that case, they wouldn’t want it to be seen by their co-workers but if that’s what they are up to, shouldn’t they get embarrassed by the computer, just on general principle? Besides if Outlook really wanted to protect me, it would have stopped all those George Bush jokes from coming my way in the last 5 years.

18: I’ve been playing a lot of poker. Texas Hold’Em specifically. Generally two or three times a week, at a local bar. It’s free to play and if I win that night I get a gift certificate for the bar/restaurant. Every three or four months, I play at John’s house when he does a barbecue/poker night. I’ve even started playing for money once or twice a month. Nothing big, but I do it since the players are usually better and less stupid when cash is involved.

19: I love competition but I hate to lose, so I resist doing things I don’t think I can do well.

20: My favorite movie stars are: (Women) Sandra Bullock, Marisa Tomei, Reese Witherspoon and Deborah Foreman and (Men) Harrison Ford, Ben Stiller, Bruce Willis and Clive Owen. You might be thinking “Deborah who?” Well, she’s the girl from My Chauffeur, Waxwork and April Fool’s Day. Still nothing? She was also in Valley Girl. Now you can say “Oh, yeah. But she hasn’t done anything in twenty years, has she?” No she hasn’t but that’s how much I like her. Her old movies are better than any new movie from Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce or Nicole Kidman.

My 10 favorite movies from last year were: 10) Forgetting Sarah Marshall; 9) Quantum Of Solace; 8) Slumdog Millionaire; 7) Tell No One; 6) Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist; 5) Wall-E; 4) Dark Knight; 3) Sex & the City; 2) Tropic Thunder; 1) Iron Man. The worst movies, or at least the ones that made me feel like I wasted my money, were The Spirit, Four Christmases, Burn After Reading, Transporter 3, Made Of Honor, Harold & Kumar Escape Guantanamo, You Don’t Mess With The Zohan and Max Payne. I don’t know if this list says anything about my taste in movies or rather the state of the movie business. Draw your own conclusions.

21: I like sharing music with people. I listen to a lot of music and I know other people don’t, even if they want to so I try to recommend things I think they might like. I can’t imagine going through life without music, much like I don’t understand people who don’t like to read. Other people have introduced me to songs and bands I’ve loved, so I feel an obligation to pass along the experience. I know that just because I like something is no guarantee others will like it too (You mean you don’t like disco or industrial music? Really?) but when they do, it’s such a cool experience. You’ve given someone else a happy feeling, something they enjoyed. What could be better than that? Music is the perfect medium for sharing because it can be absorbed quickly. A book recommendation takes a lot longer to get through and if they hate the book you suggested, you’ve used up several/many hours of their time. I’m still amazed that someone didn’t like the Bernie Rhodenbarr series I suggested. I mean, they love Janet Evanovich so how could they not like a series about a literate, pithy burglar? Was there not enough slapstick for their taste? Of course, they also disliked Fargo, which someone else at work recommended to them so who knows what’s wrong with their mental wiring. That brings up another category- movies- that are harder to recommend. Movies cost so much to make that the studios are forced to spend lots of money on advertising to get a large audience to see it so they can recoup their costs. With such a big marketing and promotional push behind it, it is hard for someone not to be aware of a movie so the recommendation is unnecessary- people already know if they are interested in a certain movie. It’s harder to discover a great, hidden gem of a movie. A movie would have to bomb at the box office and disappear quickly yet still be really good. How often does that happen? Office Space naturally springs to mind, which has been an automatic recommendation of mine ever since John and I were two of the twelve people who saw the movies in the theater. So if you want recommendations, I’m happy to oblige. Let me know generally what you like though, so I don’t recommend Fargo to someone who thinks a great movie is something starring Kevin James as a mall cop or a WWE wrestler as an action star.

22: Motorcycles scare me. Conceptually and in reality. So do roller coasters, although for a different reason. If you are riding a motorcycle on the highway, you need to be alert at all times, watching out for other vehicles and perfectly judging the road conditions in inclement weather. If you misjudge anything or get distracted even briefly, you lose control and turn into hamburger, as my Dad likes to say. What is your reward for all this risk? You get to your destination with bugs on your clothes. The absolute downside is death. At least in the NFL or NASCAR, where you also risk bodily injury during your efforts, there is a monetary reward. With motorcycles, nothing. A convertible car has most of the same benefits of riding a motorcycle and lot fewer dangers. Roller coasters bother me because the whole object of the ride is to simulate falling through the sky. You get taken up in the air and then plummeted earthward. For amusement. Normally that’s a bad things- no one gets off a plane that had massive turbulence or altitude drops and says “That was exciting. I hope it happens next time I’m on a plane.” On a coaster, you have no control over the descent and occasionally riders have been beheaded by faulty equipment. Explain the fun part of that to me (and I repeat- occasionally riders have been beheaded.) I know I’m probably a bit more risk adverse than some people but any recreational activity that significantly increases my risk of death is hard to enjoy. It the same reason I don’t do drugs.

23: Not married, no kids. I want both. I’m not sure if it hasn’t happened yet because of my ineptitude at dating or the fact that I’m basically unlovable.

24: I like food combos that seem weird to other people. As a kid (okay and all through college too) I would eat licorice dipped in frosting and people would give me weird looks. When I mention that shrimp goes good on pizza, nobody else seems to agree. Fried cheese should be dipped in ranch dressing, not marinara. Fruit flavored yogurt and Bugles go great together. Pickles actually taste good in grilled cheese sandwiches. Pear ice cream is a flavor that needs to be introduced to the U.S. Surely I’m not the only one who feels foods should be experimented with and mixed together? I’m certain that’s how fondue was invented and how else do you explain the idea of fusion cuisine? Stop giving me that funny look!

25: I’m usually laconic and succinct unless I’m writing, then I’m verbose, effusive and just can’t stop. I’m not sure which is the better state of being. At least for now though, I’m going to shut up.