Holidays And What I am Doing

I love Christmas. I could care two-wooden nickels about most every other holiday. Hell, I would gladly skip my birthday if all my family and friends would let me get away with it. I enjoy having an excuse to get gifts for people - and I don't think I have ever gotten people around me enough. I always wish I could do more and get more and decorate more. For those of you who know me closely you might think of this as being slightly out of character. I am so flipping ascetic with purchases for myself that I am pretty sure my wife and I have had money fights over me not buying myself new undershirts or socks I need.

I have not lived a life that including being spoiled on the holidays. In fact, a majority of my childhood Christmas memories have been, well, less than stellar. Once I got into control of my holiday experience (when I had a job and was an adult) I turned things around drastically. If I had the money - I would not even scoff at dropping multiple thousands of dollars on Christmas. Completely serious.

The first part of my adoration for Christmas comes from decorating with Christmas lights. I enjoy putting up Christmas lights. Any gap or space larger than three or four inches deserves more bulbs. I typically keep to the blue and white lights for my own home - but I will helps friends out with their own adornments of photons. It is my hope that when I own a home again, I take over the neighborhood at Christmas to decorate every home around with a huge light display. Eight house minimum. Think "Christmas with the Kranks" level of involvement.

The second and even more important part about Christmas is the whole "Christmas Spirit" thing. I don't need to get a bunch of stuff, I am not worried about commercialization of Christmas. What I care about is that it is a time set aside to care. Not like an a month of awareness like they do for Breast Cancer or Black History; this is a season devoted to the idea that we should take time with our families and loved ones. In an America where we are afraid to even take our vacation time we have earned and much of our workforce faces loss of income just to care for a sick child it is a welcome respite to know that culturally we are making a period of time about others.

Yeah - there are some horrible consumerist aspects about Christmas and every other Holiday out there. But the idea behind it, behind all the fluff and the advertisements and the gift giving and caring is something I love. That I look forward to. That ideal can't be taken from me.

I have been quiet this year as the holidays approached because I have not had the best of years. I lost some family that were dear to me. However this silence does not mean I have not been busy. Or more accurately, I have been supportive of a project my wife cooked up last year. We are having our second annual toy drive for a local Children's Crisis Center. My wife has a lot more friends than I seem to so I am glad she got this thing going. In our first year we were able to donate three care loads of stuff - toys, games, hygiene items and clothes. This year we may have even more stuff to donate - which brings me nothing but joy.

I spent some time in one of these Crisis Center's as a child myself. I was waiting for a foster home placement and I understand a bit of the feelings and experiences these children have endured. I did not stay nearly as long as some of these kids have - so the depth of what they are feeling is beyond what many can imagine. There is a certain loneliness that really can only be experienced to be believed, and each of these kids endures that. I still remember the feeling, but I don't know how to communicate that emptiness I feel when I look back to that time. My mind has a memory and my heart has an emotion but between the two I can't decide what the best way to help others understand this is.

So I want to do more. If I could take all of these kids and put them into homes today that would support them and help them heal I would do so. If I had the money I would take them all myself. Hell - I have even considered building a group home to make sure that someone is looking out for these kids. These children deserve a shot, they deserve to have someone, all of us, making sure that they can do great things with their lives. That they can create supportive families for their children they will hopefully have in the future.

So in the next few days I will be helping make a large, kick-ass delivery to a local center. I am helping make sure a bunch of kids who will never know me have a decent Christmas. It is pretty awesome to think about that - and it is something that I know I want to do more of.

So to anyone who read's this (that isn't already involved) take a look at the link here and figure out if there is any thing there that you have or would like to donate. These kids need the village to step up and make sure they have someone looking out for them. You can message me directly (Facebook or Email) and I will help you get something in the hands of these kids.

You know they deserve it. 

Waking up to the Undead

I had another Zombie filled night. It was by far not the worst one - I have seen things in the past that have both frightened me and driven me to tears. Last night was just hour after hour of gnawing fear.

I would like to thank those that appeared in my dream, for not dying. Last thing I like to have to deal with is people I care about turning into zombies. Jeff Johnson - though you might mock me in real life about my fear of zombies you were supportive and helped prepare against them. Though after putting a hatchet in your shin as a kid, and a titanium rod in your thigh as a teenager - the idea of extended bouts of running from the undead probably would not be very appealing.

I am not sure why, but I was an amusement park. People knew the undead horde was coming, some of them anyways, yet still they played on. The park itself seemed to have themed sections for a southwest "western" prairie with a mountainous area to walk in. There was a bayou area inexplicably next to the Polynesian area. And the winter area seemed nice - but was prone to avalanches that wiped people out.

I can't tell you what type of zombie attacked, or how many were taken out. After they first showed up I just kept waking myself up. Every time I tried closing my eyes to sleep they were there again. Sure - dream about zombies it is just a movie with a play and pause function. Try to dream about being super-powered, winning a major political race or a three- I guess I can stop there. You get the picture.

So, I got around two and a half hours of sleep. I am tired, and I have a wall to patch up today. Trip to a dinosaur show, the Science Museum and grocery shopping. Sounds like I will be pretty tired today.

I really Hope Zombies Can't Swim

I really hope Zombies can't swim. Seriously. Do you know how difficult it would be to stop the undead hordes if Zombies could swim? Probably just a shade below impossible, and would seriously restrict locations people could call safe havens. This would of course rely on the fact that aquatic animals would not eat them, or their water logged flesh would soak up water and they would sink into the dark depths of the ocean. There, their decomposed forms would be crushed into a wet mass of undead mush.

As long as a location can be successfully cut off or easily monitored it can remain a safe location. Even if standing water is removed as a barrier, there still remains rushing water, mountains, fire and sheer cliffs. Each of these can create hazards that the undead would be heavily challenged by. I mean, if you could build near one, having a constant flow of magma from a volcano would be a pretty impressive barrier. Granted - being that close to a volcano may not be the best location for long term survival. Volcano's tend to be a tad bit temper-mental in even the best circumstances.

Part of the difficult in preparing a zombie free zone that one can live in comfortably is the basic idea that as Zombies have become more common in media - their myths have changed. Initially zombies only sought out brains - but after a decade or two their palates grew into a general hunger for human flesh. After their hunger changed, then they began to change into more fearsome beasts. Now they can run, climb and turn into relatively powerful monkey-like creatures to terrify humanity. I have to assume these myths changed because of the American culture itself. How could a zombification disease spread in a country that has more than one gun for every single man, woman and child within its borders? Making Zombies more powerful makes that possible.

However this expansion of the genre has its drawbacks. The original zombie idea was an embodiment of a slow progressing rot, a slow death through overwhelming odds. The fear of the slow inevitable end of your life as you are faced with your mortality from those that are already passed on. That is an incredibly different fear than "Holy crap that rage-beast is going to try and gnaw my limbs off".

One theory on the development of Fears is that for some people they are manifestations of other incremental problems in their life. these fears are the way that the mind takes a single object or theme and puts all those different pieces into a single larger one. While this doesn't work for all cases, with some analysis of what a fear entails a person can reasonably figure out why someone is afraid of something.

I am aware enough of my fear, and who I am as a person to understand a large portion of my fear of zombies, and how it is different from other fears. I can see the path my mind followed to create the fear, and why at this point in my life, this manifestations of my fear is so powerful for me. It warrants a close inspection from anyone with any level of fear, as to why and how that fear came to be a part of you. Like it or not, that fear probably has a good reason to be there.

Once again, Into the Zombification Disease....

I want to thank ars technica for breaking this horrifying story. Once again - a zombification disease is in the news. This time it strikes Gypsy moths - who climb to the top of a tree and wait to be turned into a liquid (from the disease) so it can infect even more once rain comes and washes it down onto other caterpillars.

This disease is just as crazy as the ant zombie disease - except it has the added function of liquification. I don't know about you - but I don't want to become a puddle of myself. The caterpillars don't even have the decency to have zombie hunting squads to control the spread of the disease like the ants do. At least ants recognize a problem when they see it!

I guess I can add options to what happens once infected with a zombie virus - you melt like the wicked witch from Wizard of Oz - or you go and eat your family. What amazing choices.

Family

Zombies love family - that is they like to exploit our love of close family in order to eat or infect us. It is a simple truth of zombie existence - not that it is their intent of course. Zombies do not have any intent other than consumption of their human neighbors.

Zombies make terrible neighbors. They are up at all hours, growling, gurgling - and the screams of the passers-by they attack just makes it hard to sleep through the night. I don't know about you, but I would prefer to not have them within a 12,757 kilometer sphere of me. Which if anyone realized - that would be the diameter of the Earth.

In earlier posts I had pictures of the home I would want to have in the event of a zombie apacolypse - what amounted to a square box of cement and steel. Toss a few tesla coils on the top of the thing and I think it would be a great hide-away. except of course the light show when zombies came to visit. Burning bodies do not raise property value.

Through all of this - family has a comforting element to it for all of us. Our family help us create a home, in effect they become where "home" is. This sudden loss that we see our counter parts in zombie films try to protect is understandable - but still stupid. So best bet? Keep your family close by and protected. They are where you need to be.