Zombie’s Breakfast

With all the logistical hurdles with zombies, there’s one that no one seems to mention, or explain, and that is: brains. Not why the zombies want brains, but how they go about getting them. Have you ever tried to crack someone’s skull open? I have, and let me tell you: it’s not easy. The skull contains the hardest bones in the body specifically to keep the brains intact. Your average zombie has trouble with any door with a lock on it so their mechanical skills are virtually non-existent. Man first invented tools so he could crack open his neighbour’s skull and feast upon the gooey insides, then he invented fire so he could see better while doing it, then he invented the wheel so he could get there faster.

A zombie’s not going to be able to chew his way through there, either. Have you ever seen a meth head? They’re basically the living embodiment of the living dead. Meth-heads lose their teeth like crazy because of dry mouth, the silent killer. A dried up zombie is going to have the same problem. The second either one bites into your skull, he’s going to lose his teeth like a second grader eating an apple. That’s probably why so many zombies are depicted as being fully intact instead of looking like chewed-up apple cores. Also because the special-effects budget was blown on blow.

So where does this idea of brain-eating zombies come from, besides everywhere? The most popular zombie flicks always show them tearing away at the entrails like a pack of hyenas, and I can’t even think of a single scene where there was a zombie munching on a brain. Even in ridiculous fictional worlds where the reanimated dead can rip a person in half they still have trouble with the ol’ noggin munchin’.

I think most of it comes from real-life cannibal tribes who would dig up their dear departed, then chow down on their brains, because why wouldn’t you? It’s what Grandpa would have wanted. A few weeks later they drop dead from the diseases they just contracted from eating a rotting human brain, and the cycle starts over again. You’d think someone would have caught on by now. I know everyone doesn’t have the same standard of hygiene, (the French), but it’s not that hard to put two-and-two together, unless of course you’re a shambling mess from eating brains.

Then there’s the science aspect of it where if you feed one flatworm’s brains to another, it’ll gain all of it’s knowledge. That’s how Stephen Hawking got so smart: eating flatworms.

Desilu

In the plot to, “I Love Lucy,” Lucy would come up with a zany scheme that would backfire horribly and then Rickie would shake his head and say, “Lucy, you have some ‘splainin’ to do.” Assumingly, he beat her off camera, as it was the '50’s and he’d be blacklisted as a Commie if he didn’t.

Lucy was always trying to find a new way to break into the Cabana Club where Rickie played, perhaps by hiding in his bongos. Strangely, going in through the front door never occurred to her. Rickie never wanted her to go to the Cabana Club, presumably because it was no place for lady, as it wasn’t the kitchen. How did they meet on the show then? Lucy was a ginger and Rickie was a Puertorican big band leader. Wouldn’t it make sense that Lucy came in to the Cabana Club and saw him play and it went from there? It’s not like a big band club in the ‘50’s was the toughest bar you could find yourself in. There’s probably rowdier tea shops.

I was thinking about how Rickie was so dead-set against Lucy showing up, and realized it was probably for the same reasons every musician doesn’t want their spouse showing up unannounced at their gigs: because they’re busy banging groupies. Rickie was probably showing his Little Rickie to all the ladies, and he didn’t want his wife cock-blocking him. When you think about it that way, dressing in drag to go to a shitty club with shitty music just to see your own husband play doesn’t seem so unreasonable.

Forever Mourning

I’m trying to get 100% Achievements in Skyrim completed before the expansion pack comes out later this month. So far, I’m down to just one left: “Glory of the Dead.” It’s the Achievement you ear for completely “The Companions” storyline. Only problem is: due to a glitch in the game called, “Forever Mourning,” I can’t complete it. After collecting the witches’ heads and returning to Jorvaskr (I’m not going to bother to check if I spelt that right, and if I did it would only make me madder than if I hadn’t), I find that there’s been a fight with the Silver Hand and Kodiak has been killed. The current quest finishes, and the next never comes up, meaning I can’t continue. It has something to do with the Helm of Winterhold quest being active in my logbook. I’ve waited patiently for a patch to fix this issue, and it hasn’t. There’ve been patches resolving the overall issue, but nothing that works with any current in-progress save.

I finally gave up and went back 21 levels to an older save and plodded through three quests to get back to the point where I was at, only to be cock-blocked, as it were, by the same glitch. I’m in the middle of trying again with the “wait 32 days in-game,” to resolve the issue, and if that doesn’t work, the only thing I can do is start from scratch, which will be brutal.

This is all on 360, by the way. I’m also mad at my 360 for misleading information of the game-box saying the bargain bin copy of Crackdown I bought was 2-players. It is, but only by Xbox Live or system-link. Last I checked, that wasn’t two player. That was one player, with someone else playing somewhere else. What happened to all the split-screen 2-player games? Look how successful Castle Crasher is. A lot of that’s due to the fact that more than one person can play at the same time in the same room.

Jesus H. Christ

What’s in a name?

I was thinking about middle names and how ridiculous they are. A middle name is supposed to give someone a sense of individuality, seeing as how there’s likely twenty people in the phonebook with the same first and last names as you, assuming that phonebooks still exist. What that means, really, is that we ran out of new names centuries ago and started tagging on extra crap to make up for it. With the world’s rising population, what will happen years from now when there’s too many people with the same first, middle, and last names by sheer coincidence? Will we add a fourth name? It’s already happening now. Try googling your full name, and see how many tens of thousands of results that pop up that aren’t you. Your name is like a password, in a sense. It use to be all you needed for a password were around five characters. Then for security it was decided by many websites to use eight characters. Nowadays you usually need twelve characters, including a number, a capital letter and a non-alphabetical character. Plus, they’re very specific about how you arrange them. None of this makes you any more secure, however, because you’re more likely to forget your password the more random it is, plus any hacker who can find your five letter password won’t have any problem with a twelve. My point is, with seven billion people, no matter how original you think you are, there’s still going to be someone out there with the same name.

My own son has two middle names because of a last-minute decision by my wife. His original middle name was, “Hideo,” after his great-grandfather. Then she tagged on, ”James.” Now his middle initials are H.J., so I’m hoping slang changes in the next five years or so. Even then, the middle name remains much of a mystery. If you work for a big company, you likely only know people by their first, or their last names. The middle name is never mentioned except to closest friends, or if you’re filling out a form. With all the websites out there requiring you to completely fill out your information, you’re likely using your middle name in print more than you’ve ever had in your life. Even then, credit card companies and their like only require a middle-initial. They don’t even care what your middle name is. No one does, really. It’s just a piece of trivia, or something your mother yells at you when she’s angry.

Celebrities and presidents are the only one who really use their middle names or middle initials. We know who Michael J. Fox is, but what the hell does the J. stand for? And was there ever a Michael Fox, or a Mike Fox? Why use it at all? Then there’s Sarah Jessica Parker. She could easily have been Sarah Parker, but the Jessica adds a touch of class somehow. As for presidents, FDR was famous for his alphabet agencies, so it makes sense to honour that by using his initials. Plus, when you have to use his name about a million times when you’re writing about WWII, it helps save ink and time. Then there’s George W. Bush, who’s really George Bush Jr.. Nobody wants a President named, “Junior.,” or, “The Second,” plus it shows how America’s quietly slid back into Monarchy system.

Back in the Day

I’ve been thinking a lot about where I came from and some of the facts don’t add up anymore.

For instance, growing up I was never allowed to have G.I. Joe toys. Guess what my favourite show was? G.I. Joe. I was six in 1986, at the absolute height of it’s popularity, and I couldn’t have them. All my friends played with G.I. Joe, though, so I’d go over to their houses all the time. We would get together in groups and everyone would bring their favourite Joes with them. I, of course, brought nothing, having nothing to bring, so they instantly hated me. I was forced to play with their least-awesome Cobra figures. I’d get maybe one toy with maybe it’s leg broken off, and all it’s accessories missing, and I’d have to pretend to fight off the entire Joe army, jet planes and battle ships and all. Needless to say, it was bullshit. That, “everyone but me,” theme followed me for the rest of my life and set the stage for many future disappointments, all foreshadowed by a $5 lump of plastic most kids end up blowing up with firecrackers.

The reason I wasn’t allowed to have G.I. Joes is because my mom said they glorified warfare, which is absolutely true. That’s the whole point of G.I. Joes. She said that because that’s what her step-dad told her, and he was a decorated war hero. He had supposedly come back from WWII with a different outlook going in as a doe-eyed youth, and had serious misgiving about his actions over his several tours of duty. He hadn’t become an anti-war proponent, but he was strictly against any future generations doing what he did.

Only, it was all bullshit. Going through his personal belongings after he died there was a very different picture of the man who bore his will down on his grandson. Firstly, there were the medals: rows of them. He’d threatened to send them back many times, mostly over alleged slights like the Queen knighting the Beatles. He kept all of them. If you were ashamed of something you’ve done, why would you keep the award recognizing you exclusively for it? Then, there was the memorabilia from his stint during the war. This included piles of documents. Some cartoons I saw amounted to little more than hateful propaganda. One image depicted a soldier bayoneting three enemy soldiers at once. He kept this around, but I wasn’t supposed to play pretend with half-snake people who shot lasers at dudes in Hawaiian shirts riding crocodiles, because it promoted violence. Then there was the souvenirs: fascist Italian flags and Nazi coins. If he’d been in Vietnam, he’d practically have a necklace of human ears. Of course he kept the other keepsakes like the binoculars and machete: who wouldn’t? A machete is a machete. Just ask Machete. Plus he was a proud member of the Eagles where he’d hang out with his war buddies every week, and he never missed a Remembrance Day where he could put on his uniform.

So if war was so bad, why was he dedicating every day of his life basically to commemorating the one he’d been in? What kind of double-talking horseshit was this?