My Brain vs. The Zombie Chicks

On Sundays, I'm all about getting as many things done for the week as possible, so that I don't have to worry about them at 6 in the morning.  I was home alone, doing mom-type things like laundry, cleaning, and finding random Legos in odd places. Since Trash Day is Mondays, I went through the fridge looking for expired food and such.  I found some eggs, and they were near their expiration date.  I got a pot, filled it with water, and put the eggs on to boil.  I was back in the laundry room, emptying the dryer, when I heard a noise. 

*cheep* *cheep* *cheep* *cheep*

I ignored it, at first.  I thought it was my son's tablet PC with an alert about something.

*cheep* *cheep* *cheep* *cheep*

Then my brain perked up.  Sayyyy...that sounds like a baby chick! 

*cheep* *cheep* *cheep* *cheep*

No, I told my brain.  The eggs we buy at the store are not fertilized.  They check those eggs before they send them off to sell them.  Those eggs have been sitting in the cold fridge for almost two weeks. Get yourself together, brain. There are no baby chicks in those eggs.

*cheep* *cheep* *cheep* *cheep*

The thing about anxiety is that it has no rhyme or reason. Most of the time, I can talk myself out of whatever I'm freaking out about. Most of the time, I can tell myself that this anxiety I'm feeling is a side effect of one of the drugs I'm on. Any other day, I can laugh and find something to distract myself.  There are no baby chicks in the eggs. But not this day. 

*cheep* *cheep* *cheep*

The more I tried to tell myself that I was being completely stupid, the larger those thoughts became.  There are no baby chicks in the eggs.  And then all of a sudden, I realized that, if indeed there WERE baby chicks in the pot, boiling away, I was letting them die. I was horrified. A nice visual popped up in my imagination.  That helped my anxiety so, so much.

*cheep* *cheep*

I raced back into the kitchen and pulled the pot off the heat.  Then I pulled on a pot holder and started grabbing eggs, shaking them and listening, to see if a chicken rescue was in order.  I couldn't hear anything after I removed the pot from the heat, because There. Were. No. Chicks. In. Those. Eggs. I got my phone, and found an article via the great and powerful Google that said that told me that the phenomenon was all about science and stuff.  A normal sort of thing.  Happens all the time, according to the internet, although it had never, ever happened to me.   I let the eggs sit there for a few more minutes, just to be sure, then put them back on to boil. No cheeping sounds that time. 

Situation normal, brain. 

Time For Some Zombies

When my husband and I originally heard that The Walking Dead was being made into a television show, back in 2010, we were skeptical.  It wasn't that such a television show would be impossible to make.  It wouldn't, not with the technology and the makeup available.  No, we were skeptical because, let's face it, most television shows created are crap.  Television shows made from comic books are often worse than crap.  Hollywood is all about the bottom line. If it would sell more ads to have Batman drive a red Batmobile, it would happen, no matter how much Bob Kane rolled over in his grave.  Larry and I were worried that The Walking Dead would be hijacked by some producer who would demand that the storyline be changed to draw in the little old lady demographic.  We were also worried that the show would be cancelled after a season, just when things were starting to get good.  Why invest time and energy in a show when some idiot would decide to cancel the show, just like what happened to Firefly?

The idea of a post apocalyptic world overrun with zombies was intriguing, however.  So even though it was Halloween, one of the busiest nights on our street, Larry and I put Zane to bed and shut off all the lights.  We sat on the couch and watched as Rick Grimes woke up from his coma to find that he was the only living person in the entire hospital.  Sure, parts of the story were over the top, but that was kind of the point.  We were hooked.

A good television show is like a ride; there are curves and whirls, and you may of may not know what is happening next but oh-my-gosh you cannot. Wait. For the next scene. Even though Larry and I knew what was going to happen, we still startled and jumped and put our hands over our eyes .  Okay, so that was just me. 

We've been fans of the show ever since.

Never mind that an actual zombie apocalypse would be over very quickly instead of dragging on.  We happily suspend our disbelief for an hour or so.  It's a brief escape from the fact that we will have to be up at the butt crack of dawn on a Monday.   Our little problems are nothing compared to zombies wandering about looking to snack on you. I have great admiration for Rick Grimes and his gang of merry survivors. These people are hardcore.  The fight for survival has special meaning to me over the last year, and I wonder how far I would go, and what I would do, to survive.  Fight until you can't means different things to different people; The Walking Dead allows me to put my own fight into a different, if unrealistic, perspective.

My friends and I spend hours discussing various aspects of the show.  Daryl is a favorite character, because he gets things done without asking too many questions.  You need people like that, because zombies don't just stand around while the humans are arguing about how to kill them.  There's a faction of fans who insist that "If Daryl dies, we riot" for a reason.  We've even joked that if Daryl dies, we're all driving to Atlanta and burning down the writer's trailer.  (Okay, one of us wasn't joking, but we bought her another beer and she calmed down.)  

So tonight, Larry and I will be sitting in the dark, the television turned down low so that the screams don't wake up Zane.  There will be zombies, but there will also be determined humans ready to do whatever it takes to survive. 

I get that.

How The Zombie Apocalypse Really Started

"It seemed harmless.  Benign.  Beneficial, even!  It could bring nothing but good to humanity, four out of five scientists agreed. The fifth scientist disappeared quietly under mysterious circumstances.

The corporations grew ever bold, seeking to profit. People could not get enough, my grandfather told me. Farms sprang up overnight, to create vast fields of the bacilli. It was spectacular, the brilliant colors, as binary fission occurred.

People traveled for miles to photograph that, believe it or not. 

Then suddenly, not so harmless anymore. People died, writhing and screaming in hideous pain, nothing we could do.

Then they came back."




The prompt was to pick a word from page 99 of the Oxford English Dictionary and write 99 words. Can you tell I've seen one too many Activia commercials?

Don't Ever Sass A Hoodoo Woman

33 words inspired by the zombie found by Zora Neale Hurston.

Don't you ever sass no
Hoodoo woman, child.
She drag you to your grave;
Throw you in, she will.
Then she dance
A happy jig,
Say your name
And have herself
A slave.

Okay, so this wasn't my original post for today.  Last night, I had a dream, and when I woke up, this was in  my head.  It's not my normal stuff, but who am I to argue with a Hoodoo woman?

Yet Another Sign of the Zombie Apocalypse?

I went out in to the backyard this morning, and this friendly little face was waiting to greet me.  A pretty little sunflower, just poking its perky little head into my yard, just to say hello.   I was so entranced that I went over to the fence to look closer.  And that was when I noticed what was behind my fence:

TONS of sunflowers.  In all directions. Everywhere you can see back behind our house, there are sunflowers jammy-packed.  I started to get a little nervous, seeing all those sunflowers.

Have you ever heard of the game Plants vs. Zombies? It's a game where the plants fight off the zombies trying to get into your house to eat your brains.  The main flower, the one that helps you the most, is the sunflower. 

Source: ripgamescenter.com via Tina on Pinterest

Maybe the zombies will be vegetarians? 

Zombie Love

In this house, we love us some zombies.  Shaun of the Dead was a big hit, as was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  In theory, I am opposed to the idea of reanimated corpses wandering about.  The idea of a mindless eating machine stumbling around indiscriminately chowing down on the citizenry is not pleasant to contemplate, really.  Certainly it's not appetizing.  However, I can certainly participate in the 'fun' that is the current zombie trend.

Zombies seem to show up more in times of economic or other sorts of unrest, I've decided.  Times are very uncertain now, so we have had a surge of zombies stumbling through our culture.  There is a sort of logic to that--when times are tough, we all feel like we are out of control.  Like someone ate our brains right out of our head.  Also, being a parent makes me feel like that.  So perhaps if there's a zombie apocalypse, I won't notice.  

Way back before The Walking Dead(an awesome show),  we were playing a harmless game called Plants vs. Zombies on the PC.  It's your classic castle defense game.  I know that because my husband said so.  You  have plants defending your house from omnivorous zombies.  The zombies try to eat your plants to get into your house.  If they eat all your plants, they get to eat your brains. 

Source: gamehouse.com via Tina on Pinterest

The original version had a Michael Jackson zombie in a little Thriller costume.  That is how old the game is.  That little MJ zombie was adorable, and I was sad that they removed it.  The zombie who replaced MJ is a disco zombie in a white suit and platform shoes.  Cute, but no thriller.   There's a Yeti zombie, but I've only seen that one one time.  He's shy.   I've played through the game a couple of times, mostly while waiting in lines in various places. 

Zane likes to do anything that we are doing, so he of course wanted to play Plants vs. Zombies.  So we let him try on our phone, just to see what he would do.  He was able to pick up an iPad and meander his way around the touch screen without anything bursting into flame, so why not?  Zane's first attempts were to try and pick up all the 'suns' that pop up for energy.  He didn't really care about the zombies at all.  Then he discovered Walnut Bowling.  You roll the walnuts so they knock over the zombies.  He particularly loves the walnuts that explode, and he will "boom" the zombies up.   There is really nothing better than Walnut Bowling to keep a kid occupied in the doctor's office.  Or at restaurants.  Or in church.  Just kidding about the church.

This game play is all part of my Master Plan. (okay, I don't actually have a Master Plan, but it sounds really awesome to say that I do)   Plants vs. Zombies is going to train Zane to associate bad landscaping with zombies!   Lots of good plants equals no zombies, son!  In about two years, I'll have that boy out in the yard weeding and planting.  In seven years, he'll be out there with the lawn mower, just in case the tiny zombies try to move in through the tall grass. 

WOE: 5-5-5-5

Prompt:    We got this prompt from here. This could be a good way for us all to work on voice. And dialogue. And everything else.   Pick four numbers, each between 1 and 10.
Write them down so you remember.   The first number will be for your character, the second your setting, the third the time and the fourth will be the situation. Then take the four elements and combine them into a short story.   All four you picked MUST be your main elements, but you can add in other characters, settings, times and situations.  

We have Subway to thank for the numbers I chose this day--I must have heard that 5-Dollar Foot Long commercial too many times!



"I think I found something, Jernot!"  yelled Xerb from below.  I paused a moment to clear my air filters once again.  My envirosuit was just this short of unbearable.  The air of this planet Earth was just too polluted with oxygen; I was rapidly depleting my ammonia tanks.  It made me wonder if Xerb had perhaps failed to place my tanks into the rejuvenation cycle after our last salvage trip.   He was always forgetting to do that.  He was always forgetting. I only kept him around because he could steer the ship. 

I used my rockets to lower myself to where the Xerb was waiting.  I admitted privately to some curiosity as I looked around at the orbs dangling above me among dusty signs.  One of the words I recognized from my studies.  Some sort of ritual, 'Christmas',  that involved this building.  My memory was hazy. 

This strange building with the open space in the middle appeared to hold nothing upon our initial visit.  Just acres of open space, surrounded by large compartments of items sorted in some manner.  Yet it had been a treasure trove of historical items in pristine condition and ready to trade.  Xerb had located a cache of 'shoes' on the previous trip, and we had already heard from several buyers interested in owning a piece of Earth history from before the Fall.

"What did you find?"   As I touched down, I heard a rattle of movement, a sliding sound.  My head rotated to locate the source, but Xerb distracted me with his excitement.

"Look at this!"  His Analyzer in his hands, the Boss pointed a tentacle at a grouping of gray blobs around a dead tree covered in small objects.   "It's silica!  Food!  Now we have proof that these creatures ate what we do!" 

"Nonsense," I rolled my eye, my disdain rolling through my voice.  "I don't know why I bother keeping you around, Xerb.  The histories are clear that the dominant organism ate other animals.  There were no carbon-based life forms who ingested silicon. If you'd paid attention in school all those arnts ago, you would know that."

"Never mind that!" Clucking submissively, Xerb pointed another tentacle.

There appeared to be a large seat in the center of the grayish blobs, next to the dead tree. A sign above the seat said "SANTA".  There had been a minor deity worshiped by the dominant species with a similar name.  My tentacles quivered in excitement, as that sliding/slithering sound came again.  I ignored it in my eagerness.  It took me a moment to realize that there was something seated on the throne, wearing threadbare fuzzy fabric once called the color 'red'. I moved closer, until I could see a face underneath a triangular floppy hat. A face?

Could this be the actual deity?  My four hearts beat erratically.

"Xerb, this is astounding!  This may be the biggest find we've ever located.  We are going to be wealthy.   An actual corpse will fetch--"

A low growl emanated from behind me.  I rotated in time to watch four skeletal corpses crawling toward me.  I felt a pulling sensation; the figure on the seat had grabbed a tentacle and was pulling me toward him.  His head fell back as his mouth opened, and the floppy hat slid to the floor.  I felt pressure building as a mouth full of teeth closed over my tentacle.  I screamed as I heard my envirosuit tear.

"Xerb!!! Help me!!"  I could see Xerb hovering above me, a malicious joy radiating from his entire being.  The corpses were gnawing at my tentacles, chewing them off.

"These are called 'zombies', Jernot.  They consume any flesh, and they do not die.  They caused the Fall.  If you'd paid attention in school all those arnts ago, you would know that."

As I suffocated, I watched my green blood splatter on the red velvet.



As always, constructive criticism is appreciated!!

Random stuff

It's Sunday, and I have just had the most exhausting weekend ever. And not in a good way. But whatever.

Why do people get zits on the inside of their nostrils? I can totally understand that a person might have acne on the outside of the nose, but the inside?

My son has watched the entire LOTR trilogy(Lord of the Rings). The other day he asked me if Gandalf pooped. I don't think that Tolkien ever covered that in any of the bajillions of hours he spent developing Middle Earth. Should I write to Christopher Tolkien about this? I winged it; I said 'yes'.

You never hear any good tongue twisters anymore. I really liked those as a kid; I think that it helped me to enunciate my words better. I hate it when people who are talking have a mushy mouth. Especially when they work the drive through window.

Pregnant women get doors opened for them, get their bags carried, etc. Just because they are freakin' preggers. To heck with that! If you want to impress me with your chivalry, men, open the door for me and offer to carry my bags when I have a wriggling, screaming four year old in my arms. THEN I'll say that you're totally awesome.

If you have to tattoo the word 'COWBOY' on your arm...you aren't. Why do I need to tell you that? Should I ever rule the world, these sorts of people will be hunted down and branded like cattle.

Why do I see overweight people riding around stores in those motorized chairs? If there's anyone out there who needs to burn some calories, it's them! And weight bearing exercise is good for the bones! Those people make me think of Wall-E.

I already know that I will be one of those elderly people who whacks people with my cane when they are impertinent. Should I start practicing now? I already have a list of people to whack.

I am tired of happy meals, fun meals, etc. Those are too damned cheerful. I want a Surly meal, that comes with a fifth of vodka, a masseuse, and a really big stick. Or two really big sticks. In case I break one.

We are watching the Walking Dead in my house, mostly because it rocks. But I have questions. Such as how does what is essentially a dead person eat? The muscles that govern food intake don't work, nor does digestion occur. How do they smell living things if they are dead? Also, do zombies poop?

Red Writing Hood: Zombie Love

For this week’s Red Writing Hood prompt: Compose a post in the form of a text–160 characters. Your text must elicit or express fear.


Tap-tap-tap

Long bloody nails scrape the glass outside.

True love!

I killed her twice.

Until I join her, she won't stay dead.

Random Sunday Thoughts

I am looking forward to watching the next episode of The Walking Dead tonight on AMC. For those of you who don't pay attention, it's a show based on a graphic novel about a Zombie apocalypse. The show itself, at least what I've seen of it, is actually a pretty taut drama about a guy who wakes up from a coma to find everything around him decimated and his wife and son missing. It is NOT, I repeat, NOT, a show for children. Zombies are horribly disfigured and gross, and have TERRIBLE table manners besides. We certainly do not want children emulating them in any way!

Anyway, in my pantheon of things that scare the bejeebers out of me, Zombies don't make the cut. They just confuse me. They're dead, rotting corpses, but their eyeballs never seem to decompose. They make breathing sounds and vocalizations with lungs that are not inflating, and they want to eat. They can't digest food, why do they want to eat my brain? They never show zombies going #2, so obviously nothing is passing through their systems. What purpose is eating for them? They used to be human, and humans eat for energy. But you don't see the Zombies eating and then having more energy or enthusiasm, so I don't think that is it. I guess human beings are not the same as a Snickers bar.

Yeah, I think too much about silly stuff. Since I have a child now, my thoughts about silly stuff always seems to end with me thinking about how I would protect my offspring. My response to a Zombie apocalypse would probably be similar to the characters in this novel:

I would certainly hope to be practical about this sort of situation, should it ever happen.