The Gardener (Part One)

I think I'd like to turn this into an illustrated short story. I dunno, maybe childrens or tween fiction. Eh, it's more of an illustration than a legit story, but whatever; it's been on my mind for about a year, so I'll shoot it out!
:::
The Gardener

We live in a world with life everywhere and light to see it. There are trees of thousands of kinds, animals to live off them, and animals to live off those animals. There doesn't have to be green fields or deep, cool woods. There doesn't have to be life everywhere. The sun could just pour down on the earth without care or compassion, bleaching colors pale and scorching everything to ash.

Imagine there were people in that world.

People who had a thousand words for "brown" and "burnt" but not one for "green," because they never knew anything green. These people are tired and dry, but don't know they can be anything but tired and dry. The sun beats on them during the days, and the night steals their warmth and their breath.

Now, among those people, in that place, there's a gardener.

This gardener wouldn't know that he was a gardener, though. All his world would be the same as everybody else: all brown and thirsty. But, this person is a gardener, so he would be living his life while it feels like it belongs to someone else. He wouldn't fit, specifically because he belongs to a different world.

What happens when he finds a seed? Maybe he wouldn't recognize it. Maybe he would hold it in his hand like a little brown iota of magic. Maybe he would hold it every night, squeeze it, covet it. He would be afraid he would lose it, or it would be stolen. So of course he finds a field in the middle of nowhere, and he buries the seed. Day after day he would walk up to the charred stick that marked the seed's secret spot. He would be checking to be sure of its safety, to be sure that it was not taken, harmed, or lost, whatever it was to him.

What if it rained? What if this dry world was holding back a thunderstorm for centuries? And what if one day the gardener woke up in the middle of the night to the horrifying sound of lightning cracking a pitch sky?

Well, he wouldn't know what it was, but he would freak out. He would hide under his bed and wait for the rain and thunder and wind to stop. But it wouldn't. That night would stretch on for an eternity, and he would only recognize the dawn as a slight lightening of the sky. It would have gone from black to slate, still punctuated by sudden, aggressive bolts of light. His roof would leak, water would pour in through the cracks in his walls, and his door would rattle with the wind.

And finally, he would panic, grab his coat and his few valuables, and run into the storm. He would run through the wind, rain, and mud, falling over in terror with every crack of thunder, and cowering in flooding trenches. He would push, though, until he found his way to the secret spot in the middle of the field, marked with a burnt stick.

And he would freeze, in terror and elation.

Right there, in the middle of the most horrific storm of his life, in the middle of what he was so sure was going to be his last day alive, he would (for the first time in the history of his people) see green.

And that's the end of part one.

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Zombie finale!

So, a few weeks ago, we learned that zombies are a curiously popular part of contemporary american culture. After that, we learned one reason why: we're elitists at heart. This week, y'all will get my second argument for why we like zombies: we're germophobes.

germ-o-phobes

Swine Flu, SARS, HIV/AIDS, Mad Cow Disease, and Avian Bird Flu are all modern (ish) illnesses. Remember them all? I bet you do. The media probably loves these stories, as they affect every one of their viewers and readers. Who cares if SARS largely broke out in Asia? IT COULD GET HERE! Who cares if the Swine Flu is essentially the flu, but stronger? IT COULD GET YOU!

As a society, we seem to be driven by a fear of illness, and I don't blame news and healthcare industries for capitalizing on that fear. I'm not going to bother with research here; we all know just how massive the healthcare industry is. Watch TV, look at the covers of magazines and you'll see how important our health is to us. I'd say it's linked with our elitism (we're such badasses that we can kill everything but heart disease and obesity), but that's another rant.

In the history of mankind, we have never been cleaner. We have never known as much about diseases and the human body as we do right now. We have never had the kind of technology and capability to fight diseases as we have right now. We have never had such a high level for our common understanding of sickness as we have right now. But still, we're afraid. I won't explore why we have hypochondriacs (woo! spelled that right the first try! woo!), germophobes, and such a focus on cleanliness in our modern world. I won't explore that here, because right now we're all about zombies.

So, we all agree we're a bunch of germophobes, walking around with our own little personal bottles of hand sanitizer?

**crickets**

taken straight from the CDC's website!

Modern, popular, successful zombie stories source their zombies from viral outbreaks pretty much across the board. Look at 28 Days Later (they don't SAY zombie, but they're friggin zombies), the Resident Evil video game series, World War Z (the mediocre film for sure), and The Walking Dead series (both TV and graphic novels): they all depict a zombie virus. Those are off the top of my head, but come on, that's a pretty big theme here.

Now, zombism doesn't have to be viral; it doesn't have to be a disease. But it is.

The history of the concept of zombism is pretty cool, but I'll just give you a summary: voodoo. Zombism was an affliction from, you guessed it, a witch doctor. You could enslave a person after death through the use of some handy verses and herbs (verses and herbs... just say that out loud... sounds cool, don't it? Sounds like a good title to a book about a pot-smoking pastor or a contemporary washout hippie band... I digress...).

Clearly, the origin had little association with diseases, conceptually. But that kind of zombie doesn't look much like what we recognize as zombies, so what about modern works of fiction? In both Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, they never really nail down the source of zombism. There are talks and allusions to Venus probes, but really people are too busy surviving and freaking out to find any answers. But, in Dawn of the Dead, one theory is proposed: Hell is full, overflowing, and invading the living earth.

That doesn't sound like any disease I know of.

I don't know exactly when zombism picked up a viral origin (it annoys me that I don't know that), but I do know that it's a more modern concept. And I do propose that the introduction of a "zombie virus" into the lore served it well, and has become a part of its modern canon. Curiously, it's an instance of art being shaped by society; our fear of viruses and disease is expressed in modern zombie fiction. This fear is linked with our own elitism, and we see that zombie movies do two utterly important things: they sympathize with our terror and encourage our ego. They mimic our weaknesses and our strengths, and this is why they're so suddenly popular.

Click the ads, and hopefully I'll write more than once a week. Life's been happening. However, I'll leave you with this (you may have to squint to see it clearly, but it's hilariously awesome):

Why Zombies (Part Two)

So, everybody agree that zombism plays a suspiciously important role in contemporary American culture? Anybody disagree? Crickets?

***crickets***

Yeah, the crickets can disagree all they want; they're still wrong. Zombies matter to us, dammit.

But why? What is it about zombie lore that so appeals to contemporary Americans?

I have three reasons for the sudden popularity of zombism in contemporary America. First, we are attached to fundamental zombie story structure because it is linked with American exceptionalism. Secondly, modern zombie fiction encourages paranoia of disease, which is itself a growing concern of contemporary America. Thirdly, we can actually make zombies look more realistic in film than we used to, so, you know, the movies don't suck so much.

Russian President Putin would agree with my first argument: Americans think they're special. We do. I mean, he's a dick for saying it like it's a bad thing, but we do think we're special, exceptional, different, and (dare we say) better. We made famous the term "manifest destiny" with our westward expansion, we are perhaps the only country who has its own "dream." From our foundation, we have been heavily populated by A-type personalities who act, seize, and stake their future in the land they plot (and steal form American Indians, but that's another story). As a nation, since we rose to the status of a world power, we've been growing into the role of international peacekeeper. Well I wouldn't say peacekeeper, but how many times have we gone to war with someone over something that had pretty much nothing (on the surface) to do with us? Many times. We have frequent discussions on world rankings for just about anything, and we for some reason assume we should be ranked highest in every single field, from education to happiness, to GDP and cheese production. We don't have to. We could be a nation striving for mediocrity, but we aren't. We are a nation of people striving for elitism. And we have been the world's sole superpower for the past several decades (China is gonna collapse soon, don't worry), and if that doesn't scream elite, I don't know what does.

So, anybody on the side of the crickets, who claim that we aren't all about being elite?
**crickets**
Nope? Okay.

So, we're all about being the few capable and superior hands striving against a swarm of stupid.  We have the intelligence, the equipment, the foresight, the planning and the tactics, but our opponents have numbers. We are the 1% fighting a horde of unequipped, stupid, drooling, multiplying masses. Come on, that's a friggin zombie movie! Modern zombie lore has never been about one bad guy, one zombie raising hell, murdering people and burning down towns. It has always been about the survival of one or few against many. Straight-up elitism. The entire concept of contemporary zombism, what with how its spreads from person to person, fights against the possibility of it being anything but the elite few against the sub-par many. One zombie isn't a problem. One is stupid, slow, and already half-dead. It can be outran or killed with an improvised weapon relatively easily (by a main character), but let your guard down and one zombie becomes many. Let your guard down some more, and those many zombies won't be so easily overcome, and it's just a matter of time until you're eaten -- or worse, bitten and turn stupid yourself!

That drama itself would be short-lived (see Dawn of the Dead, both the original and the remake for evidence of what happens when that's pushed to its limits), so zombie lore has to introduce a new dilemma: who are these elite people with whom we are surviving; can they be trusted? We, as the elite, fear those elite surviving with us. Now THAT is the essential drama of all modern zombie lore, without which the stories tend to just fizzle out (World War Z, the film).

Now, is that an essential drama for Americans?

Yes (duh): we are a nation of constant strife, and it's usual with one-another. We are torn between Republican and Democrat, Pepsi and Coke, Walmart and Target (we seem to seek a duality, but that's for another post). A president is elected by a bare majority, usually, and he is almost always in conflict when in office. He, our leader, is in conflict with his own American people, without end.

We Americans like to think we're the best. Whether that's true or not, we like to think so. Zombie fiction is built around the best vs the worst. Or the common becoming the best through conflict with the worst. The reason Daryl Dixon has survived so far into The Walking Dead series on AMC is not because he's the best (although he certainly is [note the blue meth at 2:32]), but because he's so well-loved (SPOILIER: that's why Andrea died). It just so happens that we love him because he's the elite member of the group, who would survive without the group if he needed or wanted to. He is that rare kind of elite that rises above the rest, that kind of elite with which we Americans identify and to which we aspire.

Boom

So I was planning on making this just a two-part series, but with the epic length of this part I'm thinking I'll need to make this at least a three-part post. Make a noise if y'all are cool with that.

**crickets**

Finally, the crickets are on my side. I'll be back later to discuss disease-inspired-paranoia across American ideology and zombie lore. In the mean time, click some ads!

**crickets**

Why Zombies? (part One)

This week, I have a new, fun plan. Instead of barraging y'alls with my thoughts right off the get-go (you'll get 'em, just not in one salvo), I'll give you the very question that inspires me to write. I'll give that first, and a brief argument on its viability as a discussion topic, and then some time to think about it. After some time (you know I like to be all sporadic-like with these), I will put up my own thoughts on the answer. The idea is to inspire and encourage thought/discussion, even if it's only within one's mind, before throwing my ideas out there.

Sound cool?
Too bad, i'm doing it anyway

So, zombie-based fiction has been gaining all sorts of popularity in the past few years. I could list all the movies and TV shows, games and books from, I dunno, the past ten years for evidence to this claim. But I'm a lazy man. Instead I will propose to you two facts of evidence to the permeation/popularity of zombism in contemporary American culture:

ONE: everyone and their grandmother knows what a zombie is! Seriously, why is this word in the American lexicon? It shouldn't be at all; our language-history has at most a microscopic relationship to that of "zombie," and that itself is only in the most modern contexts. But no, everybody knows what a zombie is, and even agreed to the fundamental rules of them: dead people are alive again, without their reasoning or communicating abilities; they're trying to eat you; when they eat you, you become one and then try to eat other people; only brain damage disables them to a permanent death. Those rules are rarely changed, so we shall consider them the crux of zombism. I won't consider the ancillary rules, the flexible ones, because therein lies my answer to the question this post will raise.

Evidence item number TWO: zombie knives. Yeah, check out what Ka-Bar is doing too. You know what? Screw it, I'll put up a (violent) video:

Yeah, told ya it was violent.

But anyway, have you noticed that REAL-ASSED COMPANIES are making REAL-ASSED WEAPONS for the ENTIRELY IMPOSSIBLE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? I mean seriously, people, these things are being made -- and bought! There's a market for legitimate anti-zombie weapons, completely regardless for the fact that zombism is entirely impossible.

Zombism, we see, is so pervasive in our contemporary culture, that everybody has adopted the word into accepted dialog, and it has been capitalized on by non-entertainment entities (knife companies, used as example).

So, I must ask: why are zombies so popular these days?

The Wicker Man

Last night, I watched Nicholas Cage's biopic, The Wicker Man. It's about his life after film, in which he entered law enforcement, struggled with depression for vague reasons, and reconnected with his estranged wife and daughter. Really, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Cage was his usual subtle self, enunciating his lines with an evocative clarity, and really bringing his character (himself) to life like never before.

Well, it's Nicholas Cage, so, you can imagine the quality of acting he puts into a work that's based on his own life experiences.

It interestingly enough doesn't give much backstory to Cage's departure from Hollywood, but we catch on quickly as he has moved on to be a highway patrolman in northern California. It did not explain why exactly he decided to go into law enforcement from film, which would be an essential part of a biopic, and really the most exciting part of his life. Think of it: an actor adjusting from action movies like ConAir and The Rock to the real-life drudgery of law enforcement. There's an exciting drama; adjusting to slowing down and living a new life.

Perhaps that's why he gets depressed early on? He does (more or less) witness a graphic death on the road, but it seems to have little impact on him, other than giving him something dramatic to think about for a while. But really, you can tell, it's the boredom of daily office routine and having only work-friends that hits him hardest and sends him spiraling into depression. That's going along with the essential drama here, of a guy who lived in Hollywood and had to settle down in northern Cali at a job that he thought would be exciting, but wasn't. EXACTLY! That's it! he's bored, and when he does finally encounter something interesting (mom and daughter dying in a fiery wreck), it gives him the itch for action again!

So then, get this, his ex sends him a letter saying "Hey, come to this non-creepy place (that's TOTALLY creepy) and find my daughter, who isn't yours (she's yours, you'll see it coming), and I'll totally give you some excitement." Okay, she doesn't say that last part, but it's IMPLIED, big time!

And of course, he goes, because he's gotta get his rock and roll on.

The rest of his life story gets a little fuzzy at this point. He befriends all the women on the island immediately, because he's just so damn charming (he's Nicholas Cage). He finds a girl who looks like the missing/dead/not really dead at all (gasp!) girl, but isn't. Gets stung by a LOT of bees for little to no reason. Hallucinates about dead people who aren't actually dead. Gets burned alive at one point. Gets stung by MORE bees. Turns into a bear and punches a woman.

Then his life actually got interesting: turns out, he was a robot sent from the future to save his daughter's life from another time-travelling robot. He ultimately has a showdown in a smelting plant (or something; they were unclear on what exactly it was), in which he says "bye" to the other future robot (which is all liquidy) by shooting him/her into a boiling vat of lava. His gives Edward Furlong a thumbs-up and says "I know now why you cry" as Eddy lowers him down into the very lava that killed the T-1000.

And yay, the future is saved, thanks to Nicholas Cage! All in all, the first half of the movie was lame, but it picked up once it turned out he was a robot. You should rent it, and watch it with Rifftrax.

Click the ads; I'm out!

Leaving, part One (Bonus: sawn-off review of "World War Z")

You ever get the sense that a state is convincing you to leave and never return? Not in the sense of being railroaded out of town, or tarred and feathered, but little things.

[Scroll down for the spoiler-free sawn-off review of World War Z]

I was driving a route I've gone about once a week for the past two years, which half of Conway drives to work and back in Little Rock, when I almost got into an accident. Part of me isn't surprised, because when I moved here, my insurance rates jumped up a good chunk. That suggests bad drivers, sorry, and it was confirmed when I actually saw people "drive." Forget about the rushing through yellow lights, or even outright blowing through the reds, that's too expected for people here. No, I saw a guy make a U-turn in the middle of a busy road, weaving around what traffic he wasn't blocking! He was ten feet past the intersection (which allows U-turns legally, but that's another story), and just fifty from an actual parking lot in which he could safely turn about. But no, he HAD to turn RIGHT THERE. 

That's one story from this week, and one smidgen of evidence suggesting Arkansas needs to require a driver's education class.

Thankfully, I wasn't near a collision there. A few days ago, however, I was almost in a pile-up. Yep, thanks to some late braking by the pair of idiots in front of me at the time, we all had to engage in a tactical swerve to a staggered-line formation for safety. They went left and right, and I went right then left and deftly avoided the semi to my right and the ditch to my left, all while pulsing, pumping, and finally slamming my brakes to keep myself out of their cars. I thanked the god of anti-lock brakes and the god of attentive drivers for existing, that day (they happen to be the same god (God), who happens to be the God of Everything, which includes anti-lock brakes and attentive drivers). And of course, I do what everybody does when the cause becomes apparent: I looked. Did I see a grisly car wreck? How about our president, handing out money? Or perhaps Johnny Cash, not so dead? Of course not. So what caused the unnecessary and sudden slow-down? A young girl got pulled over. She was wearing jean-shorts that looked homemade. That's about it.

At least it wasn't nothing (that's happened way too often already).

Then later, THAT SAME DAY, I was turning right, onto a main road, when Bozo McOld decided to pull out in front of me from the bank opposite me. It was an aggressive maneuver, which I can respect, but it did require that I slam on my brakes (and same for Dude behind me) when he realized what he was doing and then immediately apologized by SLAMMING on his brakes in the MIDDLE of four lanes. I'm not kidding; he took up the entire street. Now, had he gunned it from the get-go, everything would've been fine. So it just goes to show you that half-measures don't cook, and that it's better to be an ass-hole than just an ass.

That's not the worst, though. Once, I saw a driver work VERY VERY hard to pull a u-turn to go the wrong way down an offramp. He worked for that shit. And there's a particular stretch of highway in Little Rock that I've witnessed, I kid you not, a delivery truck (big sized) pointed the WRONG WAY (toward me!), and suddenly fix his error and about-face. That was in my first month of living here (welcome to Arkansas; we don't require a driver's education course).

And that's just the road-safety stuff.

Today, I saw World War Z (It was okay, but not nearly dark enough to be a proper zombie horror, and not light enough to be a proper zombie comedy. Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, 28 Days Later, The Walking Dead: those are proper zombie movies/shows and you should watch them all twice. This movie fell short of greatness, but was good for eight bucks' fun. Not worth 3D, but worth the big screen.) After the (decent) movie, there was an encounter between two women in the audience that was honestly more tense and exciting than anything that happened on screen. Many a "fatass" was slung in that discussion, and I was convinced that yes indeed, Arkansas is convincing me to never return.

The places we live, they shape us, but there isn't much of Arkansas I want to take with me wherever I go (that stuff will be covered on a later post; this one is about bad drivers). As always, I'll close with this: Click the ads! All of them! Many times!

Triple-Stamped, No Erasies

Hokai, so, I had a job, selling mattresses, but I don't any more. So I have a lot of free time to look forward to these next few months of unemployment. See, I'm terrible at personal discipline, so this is a problem. Seriously, I've watched Star Wars twice in one day, just because I started with the first one! It's not inherently evil, sure, but there's a certain point where inactivity warps you and you discover that all you've got left to prove your existence is a broken-in couch.

I don't want that for me. I want adventure , so this blog will stand as a re-branding of, well, me, as an adventurist. The idea is, have this as a public record of what I do, which will also give me reason to do adventurous things... like, I dunno, parkour or something (please no parkour, for the love of God). I'm also writing a novel, so the plan is make this blog wildly successful over the next few years (well, overnight would be great, but I am still pretty lazy).

Successful to the point at which people say "Hey, I love your words and want you to lie directly to me, but not on the computer, can you write a novel?" To which I shall respond, "Why yes, of course; here it is!"

And they'll throw money at me (and claim I can see the future, which I of course will not correct) until I can retire and do nothing whatsoever with my life. To the casual analyst, it would seem that I plan on taking a very long route to the same place (why not just skip the writing and the blog, and just do nothing but maybe working crap jobs?). However, they would be forgetting one thing: I have to feed my ego.
Yup, there it is. I like to think I'm important.

That there's my life plan. Subject to change at the drop of a hat, of course (see the rules... listed somewhere).

But, I want to write daily in this blog, because otherwise people will just forget that it exists (seriously, that's how it is with me). The catch is, I get bored, and I lose focus. My solution is to have seven subjects I can address in any given entry. Seven things I feel I can write about entertainingly (totally a word; suck it, dictionary!) enough to actually get people to read all the way through things and again, make them buy my book once it's written.

Here are the ideas I have so far:
1) Mind-jobs (at some point, I will try to convince you that circles don't exist)
2) Principles of a Dignified Life (living by a code, so to speak... seriously... like, tip even when you're poor)
3) Outright Lies (storytelling, of the freeform variety because thick fiction doesn't mix with the interwebs)
4) Cultural Analysis (how Star Wars episodes 1-3 should have been, and the implications of Twilight)
5) Adventureblogging (doing stupid shit for attention, like, unplanned bike trips)
6) People-Hacks (like life-hacks, but with people... manipulating people)
7) Beginner's Luck (I try something with little to no preparation or experience in it, like building a chair)
8) anything else

And lastly, I'll leave you, dear reader, with this thought: click on the ads!! please for the love of God, click on the ads! I don't care what they're for, just click on them; that's how I can make money out of this! Click multiple times! I don't care if you read the blog or not, just visit it ten times daily and click every ad that shows up on it! Make a game out of it somehow, like, how many different ads will Google put in there for you to click?

you'll think of something; you're creative