"So where are you working now?"

"Nowhere."

"What the hell have you been doing this past two weeks?!"

"Sleeping, mostly. Reading a bit. Eating ice cream. Playing with my nephews. Riding my motorcycle. Watching zombie movies."

"Are you doing anything productive whatsoever?"

"I spend some time educating people on internet forums. I don't charge for it; it's more like community service."


For example:

Wreckless wrote:

They say human beings use only up to %15 of our brains. Perhaps some if not most the %85 is primal knowledge left over from when we were hunter and gatherers, that enhaces our sences capibilities.

(Don't take this the wrong way but,) research shows people of African decent can hear better (long distances, ampiflication,ect) then people of European decent. Any fact that might be related to this is that people of African decent's cranial/neck structure is 100,000 years behind in human evolution, and brain devolopment is behind a tad as well. So meybe zombies brains are set back 100,000 years or so. This mey also affect small and all other sences.

Gurg wrote:

Hullo. There's a lot going on in the above paragraphs, but I'd like to introduce a few ideas about how the amount of the human brain is "used" and then a few ideas about human evolution, specifically on the concept of being "behind."

Average brain usage: The 10-15 percentage people often hear is very, very specific. Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Positron Emitting Tomography (MRI and PET) scans often show what parts of the brain are active during certain activities like spelling and writing, but at no point is the rest of the brain idle.

The brain is not a muscle, more like a computer.

I think we can agree that it seems like some people use more or less, but biologically that isn't the case.

Whenever someone has a head injury, or a stroke, or partially drowns, or has a brain tumor, something is affected. Not always, but almost always. If only 10 percent of the brain were necessary, the injuries and illnesses that affect it would be 90% less. But that is not the case.

Next I'd like to address some misconceptions about evolution. Evolution does not go from lower-to-higher, dumber-to-smarter, or better-to-best. Evolution is merely change. Then, according to the theory of Natural Selection, the environment then "selects" the organisms best able to live in that environment.

Big and scaly used to be in for example, then the temperature changed and small and hairy became popular.

This doesn't happen quickly [in most cases; debatable] but very exact conditions are required for evolution to occur.

Our physical appearances as a human species are incredibly malleable. We're right up there with the dog for wacky mixes of traits and size variation.

Humans are learning machines. We all are. If I learn nothing in my lifetime and manage to have a kid before I get myself killed, that child does not lose potential to learn. Nothing happens to its brain, or its genes.

There are several examples in which we find, what might be thought of as "advanced" people having extreme difficulty with "less evolved" people: The Lord's Resistance Army comes to mind. Feisty little guys.

Oh, also those pesky folks in Mesopotamia, aka Iraq, the cradle of civilization, a people as genetically similar now as back in 5,000 BC, seem to be handling this technology thing okay.

I know this is just a forum, but great care should be taken when insinuating that some Americans are less than others.

But then again, I'm a bastard race: Mexican, a mutt-like hybrid of the Aztecs with their love of astronomy and the curious Spaniards with a lust for gold. But born and educated in the United States.

That's what makes the difference, not half-assed genetic speculation.

[So I'm a new member of the Zombie Squad and have been tackling serious issues like zombie biology and what swords are best for killing zombies. I joined because I am terrified of zombies. Sometimes our conversations become surprisingly philosophical so I've put some of my writings up here. Think of it as an answer to the questions that were never asked. Much like my entire life. The following was spurred by a discussion on the proper approach to an aggressive animal:]


The courts may decide the legality of any lethal incident that occurs, but in my heart and mind if I have to kill anything it is always my fault for not being smart enough to find another solution.

I have sort of a Vash the Stampede approach but it's more of a "What if I'm wrong?" approach.

I'm thinking that Lethal Weapon movie where he had to wear that racist sign around his neck.

I recommend my perspective because you'll be able to honestly say you tried everything else, and as a bonus you may figure out something incredibly badass, like the first person who ever punched a shark in the nose.

Also, I will not engage except to kill. I do not "fight." I have taken hits before because the person was not a lethal threat (usually just stupid) but I would feel terrible killing a stupid person.

At my college, I think about a year ago, a couple drunk idiots got in a fist fight over something ridiculous. They'd never met before. They take it outside, one guy throws a punch, the other guy falls and hits his head on the curb. Shortly after, he dies. Right, wrong, legal or not doesn't matter to the dead.

Weep for the enemy, because we put them to rest and we, the living, take up their burdens.

I nearly killed my dog after he attacked my sister. I felt his throat began to crack in my hand. I felt his life in my hand and I felt the torrent of rage that yearned to end him. I wept, then, at the cruelty of the world for putting us in this situation. Not a time to think about whose "fault" it was, just a time to act.

I didn't kill him then. I tended to my sister's injury. Took the dog for a long walk. Fed him some leftover steak. Sat with him for a while. Then we took him to the animal shelter and had him put down.

I was barely a teenager, but I knew, as one of the people responsible for my dog, that I had failed him.

Whoa, this got long. Just um, remember that dead is forever. Unless we're talking zombies here.

Wrote this somewhere else and now I'm hurling at the wall of the blog like a pasta noodle in the done-ness test.

Our house is certainly omniscient, but that's because it exists outside of linear time. Beno travels backwards through time; that's why he never takes risks because he's already seen what's happened.

Brian never leaves his room which is wise because the master bedroom is so named because it is omnipresent, thus he is actually in all places at all times, except when he's in Kalimdor.

Myself, I am on a sort of temporal gyroscope suspended on a delicate filament of linear time. I move forever forward, but am essentially just going around and around.

The key to this exercise is to keep my eyes on the keyboard. Looking at the screen as I type creates feedback, and god knows I don't want that.

So many choices, so few answers. Everyone is the hero in their own story but no one gets to know how it all turns out. Hell, the ending might be happy as all-git-out but then some asshole may tack on an epilogue that ruins the whole thing. Or it might just all be dream. I hate that shit. If you can't decide if life is a dream or not then I'm not terribly interested. In fact, wake me when it's over.

Dang. Looked up again. I can't help it; I make too many mistakes when I type. I can't ignore it; I can feel it happen. I'm using too many semicolons; I must stop. Really, two semi-colons is all a reader can be expected to tolerate. It's like using "all of a sudden." It better damn well be a sudden thing that happens next, but also the sudden thing better be so incredibly sudden that, had I not been duly warned by the phrase "all of a sudden" I might simultaneously shriek, wet my pants, and hurl whatever the offending medium is (book, iPod, computer,...person?) into the air and shoot it.

Such would have to be the suddenness of anything following that phrase.

Now that we're clear.

Unemployment has been kicking me down the gravelly path of self-discovery. I've discovered that left to my own devices I yearn to do little more than sleep, read, and drink weak tea with honey. Glutton tendencies have all but vanished. I can't even remember the last time I ate. I thought I wanted to drink myself stupid but a single beer was enough to satisfy me. I've even gone to a few bars lately and ordered...water.

I recall saying that having only one drink was a sure sign that I was not myself but a doppelganger that should be caught and waterboarded until it revealed my true whereabouts.

Heh, maybe it's just working that makes me an alcoholic. I've discovered the cure!

But I may be getting bitter. Earlier today I joked that since my firing, I've got more time on my hands than Heath Ledger's masseuse.

I immediately regretted it. But I didn't erase it.

Anger makes me joke like that. I loved Heath Ledger and the only way I can deal with it is to make terrible, terrible jokes. It's what any true student of The Joker would have wanted.

BLOG!

At last, my life is finally returning to its natural state: a boy-meets-world/Walter Mitty/burlesque farce/parody of itself.

I'm much more used to operating in these conditions.

On Wednesday night, I was fired for putting in my two weeks notice.

Heh heh, I couldn't make this stuff up.

Also, last night a mysterious journal appeared outside my bedroom door. It smells delicious and has a classical scene on the front, perhaps of Italy.

Yes, this is much more comfortable. Bring on the day.

Whoa, nelly! Let's all hold our horses now. After re-reading my last post, I noticed that I've devoted a too-large portion on suicide. This was just musing, mind you. I am not religious and even if I was, most agree that I'm not exactly in store for eternal paradise, not quite.

I'm in no hurry to disband my molecules. Not the big ones, anyway.

The chocolate medallion I was wearing around my neck when I was found as a baby under a saguaro cactus foretold my fate: "This teh boy shall ne'er die until he hath been forcibly removed from a John Tesh concert."


And that hasn't happened yet. But there is one coming up, now that I think about it.