sniff, sniff

i have a cold. sore throat, stuffy head, sneeze-o-rama - ugh! some way to spend the weekend.

there is absolutely nothing interesting going on. i've been reading some really great books by s.m. stirling lately; dies the fire, the protector's war (there was no war in the book, however), and now the third in the trilogy, a meeting in corvallis. the premise for these books is for an unknown reason, could be a freak natural occurrence, could be aliens, who knows? everything mechanical in the world stops working; in the book this event is called "the change". gun powder and explosives don't burn right, either, so guns, dynamite and the like are useless. most of the people in the world die, and what happens to rest is what the book is about. i love these kinds of stories, alternate realities and such, and this kind of ties into my love of zombie movies. even though there are no zombies it has the element of little pockets of people thrown together because of a cataclysmic event trying to survive. i have always liked to think that should there be a zombie attack, i'd be one of the survivors. then again, i don't know how to shoot a gun and we all know only a head shot will kill a zombie. i did decide i should learn how to shoot a gun after watching the dawn of the dead remake a few years ago. my brothers, joe and justin, sat with me and the rest of the viewers after the movie coming up with our plan to survive. joe and justin had just bought a canoe at the highland park rummage sale that weekend (for like $50 bucks - sweet!), and justin and joe were living in lawrenceville just a few blocks from the allegheny river, so both figured prominently in our survival plans.

on the way home i called drew, who was away on a business trip, to tell him i wanted to learn how to shoot a gun, because you never know when zombies might attack and while i was never a boy scout, they're onto something with the whole "be prepared" motto. he of course thought this was hysterical because he thought i should know how to shoot a gun just in case i was ever in a situation where i might need to shoot one, and i'd always said i had no interest in guns nor learning how to use them. he's kinda got a bit of a survivalist streak, my sweetie; again, something that will come in handy during a zombie attack. in the midst of our conversation my cell phone cut out on the section of wible road it always does, and i thought to myself, if this was a zombie movie this is where i'd bite the dust. i collected the dog and slept at my folks' place that night, and when i got up in the middle of the night to pee, i thought to myself "i am so glad i came down here!" i have no pride when it comes to such things... my overactive imagination gets the better of me sometimes and it was better to just indulge it by going to my parents' house. drew also thought this was hilarious, and pointed out we lived a minute's walk away from the local police station. i replied, "yeah - a police station filled with armed zombies!", so he gave up trying to dissuade me.

as long as i'm on zombies, there's an excellent zombie book that you might want to read: world war z: an oral history of the zombie war. fucking excellent book! i think they're making it into a movie... i hope they don't fuck it up. i wonder who's in it... must do a google search.

well, that's it for me folks. and my advice to any of you who, like me, are a little chubby and out of shape, or who don't know how to shoot firearms or live on nuts and berries in the woods... perhaps we should all make a new year's resolution to get in shape and learn a few new skills, because if the change ever does happen or zombies attack, i'd hate for any of us to bite the dust because we were the sick zebra in the herd.