The Daily Adventures of Mercat

Some sort of steampunk or adventurer or mummy-hunter or treasure-hunter or zombie hunter something.



I bought this bitchin' vest at T.J. Maxx (lol Members Only!) that sort of reminds me of River Song's white one, except brown. And OMG it is thick and fuzzy and fabulously comfortable. So I'll be channeling some sort of archaeologesque-pirate-dystopian-thing.

Probably just rummage my closet for whatever I like and be like FUCK IT IDEK WHAT THIS IS




Aaaaaand then hunt down someone who would want to do a photoshoot for my Medusa sometime. Some time when I'm FUCKING FREEZING I guess.


Speaking of which, holy shit we had some apocalypse clouds in Dayton today (and it feels like it should have been an ice storm, it was cold enough-- apparently it did hail somewhere). I was running errands and I walked outside and immediately noticed the clouds (funny how you notice the smallest things when they're "not right") and went HOOOOLLY SHIIIIIIII-- I think I just walked into the end of Ghostbusters.

You know, when the clouds are getting all swirly-artistic-terrifying? Yes.


And then I was about to get in my car and I heard the LOUDEST, SHARPEST thunder of my life. No lightning. No rolling, booming. Just one huge crack that sounded like a massive explosion. I am not the type of person to be afraid of storms, in fact, the very opposite (and most of the people I grew up in Xenia think I'm an asshole for all the jokes I've made). However, this crack was SO TERRIFYING that I ducked and very nearly would have hit the ground.

At least there is some solace (although solace is not the word I want to use there-- damn you, thesaurus) in the fact that I immediately ducked. Survival instincts = intact.

I really liked it. I was sort of like an action movie, except the villain is invisible to the naked eye. However I thought it was really well-written, from an entertainment and pacing standpoint, and my mother approved as a doctor. She gave my dad and I kind of a running-brief-commentary on events that were accurate or not, and overall she thought it was fairly accurate.

The most inaccurate part, she said, was the bat involvement. I think she meant the fact that it was a bat virus spreading to humans, but possibly she meant the pig/bat crossover. As I'm not an epidemiologist, I don't know. But I do like bats, and ( SPOILER )

She did say she thought they probably used bats just to differentiate it from the bird flus as of late. (I had a bird fall out of the sky, dead, next to me a few years back. DEFINITELY weirds you out. I don't think it was "bird flu" though.)

I saw that Bat Conservation International is going to write an article on that aspect, so I'll probably repost that whenever it comes out. I love my batties :C And we don't need any more public fear of them, jesus. They don't fly into people's hair, they're not actually blind, and although if a bat gets inside you should treat it as rabid, rabies is actually pretty rare. (I wish there were a better way than killing trapped bats to test for rabies, but alas. *tears*)

I figured my mom would like it, when H1N1 hit campus two years ago (she's the head doc in the health center) she was all about getting shots and telling people to buy hand sanitizer and isolating people. It was interesting to hear, after we saw Contagion, about everything she did to prep for H1N1 when it started spreading. She said she wanted at least her department to be prepared if none of the others were, and they ordered a 3-month supply of N95 masks, which was like 5000 of them or something. And in a meeting she mentioned to other departments (her boss? student services? not sure) that if it was as bad as the 1918 Spanish Flu (which people were suggesting originally that it was, or worse, but she said that was the worst-case projection they were using until it stats came in), they would need a morgue for 10% of the student population. (Which seemed high to me, but, I am not a doctor, and she might have meant 10% of the infected population, but I can guarantee with a bunch of college students living in such close proximity that's probably most of campus anyway.)

ANYWAY.

My dad made the comment that he didn't think they successfully showed societal breakdown. People could still get gas and electricity even though garbage wasn't being picked up. ( SPOILER ) And he thought they didn't successfully show the emotional impact of that sort of thing, especially when ( SPOILER )

I told my dad that they probably wanted to avoid that because there's SO MUCH of it in movies like 28 Days Later and Zombieland, and they wanted to avoid that zombie-movie sort of stereotype. I think it's kind of an interesting commentary, though, considering that the US seems to expect riots and violence, but as we witnessed (and someone pointed out to me) when the earthquake hit Japan, they were very calm, helped eachother, et cetera. Is that humanity or local culture? A worthy discussion point, I think.

But anyway. THE SCARIEST THING ABOUT THAT MOVIE (other than I hope people don't start hating bats because of it): Jude Law's snaggletooth. For reals! He has some super-close-ups, and it was a terrifying thing.

When they brought out his character I thought they were going in a different direction with it, and I wonder if the people who wrote/worked on Contagion had any influence from Mira Grant's book Feed. I thought it was interesting that they both brought bloggers into the mix, but good to see they went in different directions. However, I'm not sure Contagion really went all the way with Jude Law's character, especially considering that they had A TON of medical advisors, and they mention both homeopathy and vaccination-autism fears. Two things which have no scientific support, and yet, it seemed to me that whatever the "natural" remedy was supposed to be (whether homeopathic or not), there was one line (I can't remember) that seemed to be evidence that it worked. And not only that, but that ( SPOILERS )

As for Marion Cotillard's character, I think they forgot to wrap up her storyline?! ( SPOILERS )


Anyway, it was entertaining, and it reinforces my desire to create an emergency-preparedness kit (aaaand maybe a bugout bag). I'm glad my mom enjoyed it, especially after she forwarded the CDC's "zombie preparedness" page, which she thought was cute. I got her to see Shaun of the Dead last year, and after talking about Contagion there's a chance I can convince her and dad to see Zombieland or 28 Days Later.

So if you like that kind of movie, I definitely recommend it! It had an all-star cast and I thought the acting was great. And if the science was 95% great, too, that's excellent.

Side note: didn't see Madagascar get red-ed on any of the maps, heh. (joke source...ish)

EDIT: Here's an adorable battie gif. Just because :3

(The title has nothing to do with anything except that I just took a practice GRE and "gremlins" was the first word to pop into my head starting with "gre-".)

Forgive me for just nearly missing the daily-post--deadline by a few minutes, because I just finished a GRE practice test. How sad is it that engineering has made me excited to take a standardized test?! I work well within boundaries and certain expectations, or no boundaries at all, apparently. I don't know how well I am cut out for slightly-open-ended design work. Which is not good, because that is pretty much anything engineering is. I mean, there are the laws of physics, and the laws of the land, but the problem is that the former is very mathematically complicated and the latter is just very convoluted and you only come to know it really through exposure and experience. Neither of which I really have. And not to mention, mayhaps my brain just doesn't work that way, because I never seem to know where to find the equations/set-up I need for engineering projects. Which makes working in groups good for me because then the other people are good at starting the project, and I'm good at checking things and thinking (maybe a little too far) outside the box.

So... menial desk job or very creative in-charge job for me, I guess. Strange. ANYWAY. Onto the prompt.

My favorite meme of the moment... I don't think I currently have one. Being gone all summer I kind of missed Double Rainbow and Hide Ya Kids and I don't really... "get".... either. Although I think I saw Antoine Dodson a while back but never saw the Bed Intruder Song? I don't know.

Does Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear count as a meme? Because it was probably more that than real political activism (or anything) and I kind of liked that (despite people being bitchy for it). However, it's not quite as wild as Anonymous' protests, so idk.

I guess I don't have a favorite meme right now, so I hope something comes along soon. In the meantime, I'm always a sucker for EFG and since the 5th of November was just a few days ago, let's say that. Even though it was nothing to do with anything, legitimately.

MOVING ON. I was thinking about password access, which led me to think about where you keep that kind of information so that it's safe with you but easily found by others in the case that you were to die. Which led me to think about wills, and the fact that while my mom has every once in a while talked about what she wants (donated organs iirc) and my dad has mentioned his wants (a big party), they don't really know my beliefs in terms of my... lack of faiths... (BUT NOT LACK OF MORALS... byuh) ANYWAY. I don't need any kind of fancy burial, I'll be dead. I've kind of always been about pragmatism, and even when I was really young (early gradeschool) I remember considering the pros and cons of cremation. So this is my current set of considerations: (And let's not call me morbid here, because I honestly approach a lot of what most people would consider "morbid" as just purely interesting. Death is the natural extension of life. Morbid for me is a whole other level. Perhaps I disdain that word... I'm more of a naturalist than a goth? And science is nature, so. )

1. If there's any hint of foul play just preserve as much as possible. Not that I expect this to happen but being slightly paranoid from reading too many detective novels and watching too many crime shows, if there was any hint of foul play I hope there's a really good twist! Which probably means exhuming the body at least once. (...Maaaaaaybe that's morbid. BUT SO ARE CRIME SHOWS)

2. If not, donate any usable body parts to organ donor programs and/or to science. Basically get as much practical use out of it as possible.

3. Bury any remains in a manner as natural as possible because it seems pretty pointless to be dumping lockboxes filled with chemicals into the ground just to sit there and be preserved for... ever.

3b. Plus this ensures that I will never be Undead. (Zombie, vampire, etc.)

4. Possibly do something awesome with the remains such as:
a) use the bones for something awesome such as art, Yorrick's skull in a production of Hamlet, a modern reliquary, et cetera,
b) include them in a treasure hunt/puzzle or as a geocache (WITH ONLY AWESOME TREASURE INSIDE. If I am to be a buried treasure, I fully expect it to be a goddamn bitchin' one.)
c)...et cetera. Basically I think skeletons and eyes are pretty cool things from a design aspect and have many interesting and beautiful (if slightly morbid) options. (BUT I'M OKAY WITH THE SLIGHT MORBIDITY HERE. AT THIS POINT THE MORBIDITY BECOMES MORE WUNDERKAMMER-CURIOUS THAN NATURALIST-CURIOUS BUT IT'S STILL AWESOME.)

5. A really cool headstone. Some classic-and-slightly-creepy design, with a totally clever and awesome epitaph. Like the headstones at the Haunted Mansion, with their Victorian-Gothic-slightly-disquieting style and the totally awesome epitaphs (at least out front--I've never studied the epitaphs inside the ride).

OKAY TOTALLY DONE WITH MY MORBID MOMENT NOW, for those of you who may not like that sort of thing... er... sorry for the lack of warning... =/

At any rate. I have a rant but I don't really want to rant about it right now. Let's just say, between people going back on my Halloween party invite, and being whiny about the party, and my friend failing to do the one thing I asked him to do for the senior show (i.e. leave an appropriate mid-movement moment for the dead-bug), which I told him a month ahead of time when we were planning it as a group, but do people just blow me off when I make comments a few months in advance? BECAUSE I HAVE ACTUALLY THOUGHT THESE THINGS THROUGH, and I mean them. If I change my thoughts, I WILL ALSO BRING THAT TO YOUR ATTENTION.

Do I just... scream "IGNORE ME" or something? (Heh.)

Yeah. Anyway.




...Also I went to trivia tonight for the first time in a good while and I wore by awesome retro-rainbow Star Wars shirt that I bought from Target's boy section last year. The usual awesome trivia guy wasn't there, and the girl taking his place was not as fun. Plus, a lot of the questions were wrong tonight. "A one-note instrument made popular at the world soccer games this summer"? Vuvuzela, except that like all other objects with a natural frequency, if you halve, double, or otherwise multiply that frequency you will get other notes. Octaves, for simplicity, or perhaps... partials... if the instrument is more complicated. Say, like a trumpet. Speaking of trumpets, "a cornet most resembles this musical instrument". Maybe a cornet? It's actually a legit instrument.

And then Pat, being his normal uppity Classics-major self, called out the trivia girl on the question "what famous temple site on the Acropolis?" by screaming "Which temple do you want?! There are at least nine different ones!"

However I also learned that the F22 Raptor can go supersonic without having to use its afterburners which is called "supercruising". Also, the evil wizard on Smurfs is Gargamel and the cat is Azrale. (NO IDEA if I spelled those right, also don't care much.) And the compact disk was invented in 1965 (we guessed floppy disk).

Also-also I cleaned my room today. Go me!

THIS IS A LARGE POST, I AM WARNING YOU.

HOLY SHIT I SUCK AT POSTING. This thing has been sitting on my desktop for a month and a half, christ, shame on me. Anyway. I'm trying to make better habits for myself... Some are getting better (I keep a real schedule on my ipod! I'm under 100 firefox tabs consistently!) and some not (I don't check my calendar, I forget things, I haven't organized many piles of files on my new computer... from a year ago...)

Shia says Indy V will be crazy. idk what to think. I'm excited but hesitant at the same time? Eeengh. Like I said after Indy IV, I mean, at least they can't do that one anymore. (Also, I told you so. Also-also, I am kind of sick of hearing about your stereotypical MacGuffins: the spear of Longinus, Noah's Ark, all that stuff.) GO TO HAWAII, PLEEEEASE

But, uuuuhhh, if Spielberg pitched a script, I'm guessing this is happening. So... yay?

...I'm depressed that that last sentence has a question mark attached to it. :(

HOLY SHIT YOU KNOW WHAT'S DEPRESSING?! WHY ON EARTH IS THIS A MOVIE. WHO ON EARTH THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA. SHANE VAN DYKE WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ATTACHED TO THIS, YOU WERE AWESOME ON DIAGNOSIS MURDER AND NOW YOU ARE VERY NOT-AWESOME. AUGH.





Um...yes.

Also--ADORABLE KITTANZ:




While we're doing videos, this time-lapse-experiment-turned-art-video is absolutely fantastic:

ANTS in my scanner > a five years time-lapse! from françois vautier on Vimeo.

I hope this is just some lawyers having fun, and were not actually hired over legitimate offense.

I didn't even know they had finished the script for this, shit. Three months away was apparently a COMPLETE NEWS ISOLATION, much moreso than usual. (Nobody famous died.)

This movie looks awesome! That hat looks awful. (Short crown + extra-wide brim = grossnasty.)

Ghostbusters/AC/DC mashup:




Lady Gaga kidnaps Comissioner Gordon. Guys, I was about to say "I want to live in that world", and then, you know, I remembered that Lady Gaga is a real person and kicks major ass.

A good essay on Iron Man 2, which I am still excited about. The awesome thing about disappearing from the world for three months to memorize a metric assload of numbers until you've lost 15 pounds is that, when you get back, all the movies you just watched in theatres (and loved) are about to come out on dvd. Fuck. Yeah.

Some awesome shots from the filming of Star Wars.

So, "mad science", you say?!



That is the kind of awesome shit I'd like to do with my life. (I must say, though, that the closest I've ever come was destroying an antique rusted oven with a sledgehammer. Also fun, except for the part where the paint chips were popping off the bent metal everywhere...)

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT HOLY CRAPCAKES. NIGHTMARES. NIGHTMARES BEYOND BELIEF.

Jesus, it's about time! They better make these. Not that I'm planning to buy any, but, yeah...

Oh, James Cameron. I thought I couldn't hate Avatar any more, but I was wrong. You think you're God's gift to cinematography when really it sounds like you're just a rich bully. I kind of want to go see Pirahna 3D, even if I hate it, just to fucking spite you. Goddamn.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS? Rick Moranis may come out of retirement for Ghostbusters 3. HELL. FUCKING. YES. As long as this shit is better than the game (a bit repetitive story-wise, in relation to the movies). Also, I thought we were already clear that Oscar is Venkman's? There's some banter toward the beginning of the second one that that is what I took away from it.

OH HEY THERE BLACKBEARD. Why the fuck don't you have cannon fuses in your beard?! Jesus, the man should look MUCH more epic than that. For god's sake his body circled his ship seven times before sinking after he was beheaded! (Fuck yeah pirate lore.)

Chewie: not nearly as adorable as Winnie. But still hilariously adorable.

Here! Have a picture of Viggo the Carpathian.

Okay, now, look. I am all about crazy costumes but I don't even know what's going on here.



So adorable.

If the world is making you feel weary (although I don't see how that's possible after all those adorable kitties), I prescribe this.

Next video: An apparently sanctioned-by-Lucas video about the dumping of Jabba's cargo. With a creepy animation of Han Solo. (BUT I SAW THAT RAIDERS REFERENCE. I SAW IT.)

...Definitely thought it was going to be something like River Tam in the box though, the shape was eerily similar.

Heheheh kitty parkour.

HOLY SHITBALLS this woman has completely missed the point of feminism. Oh my god this article is rage-inducing. OH. MY. GOD.

Good news, videogamers! Playing video games enhances decision-making skills. That is, it enhances your ability to make choices faster.


Oh! An antibiotic-resistant superbug. Awesome. This may be our downfall. However, if you're worried about the apocalypse, I just thought you'd like to know that science seems sometimes straight-up fictional. I know a lot of zombie movies/novels/etc. lately have been leaning on diseases like ebola, mad cow disease, or other things to explain the basis for the disease. So here's a crazy fact: mad cow disease causes cattle's eyes to glow. WTF.

Rechargeable cars are less hurtful to the environment than gas, even if charged using "dirty fuel". And it's crazy, if it could charge using renewable sources--solar, wind, etc.--it's FORTY PERCENT cleaner than a gas-using car. Holy shit. Why is the world so resistant to changing how we use our resources? :(

(Answer: laziness, greed, but it still pisses me the fuck off.)

I read an article the other day about how an old solar panel from the White House was rediscovered, and some students, led by Bill McKibben, took it to the White House to see if they would take it back as a symbol of good faith and an attempt to move conservation forward in the eye of current US politics. Some of the statistics were incredibly impressive--like the fact that seed sales increased by 30% the year Michelle Obama was promoting her White House garden. But the kids were taken into a "war room" and basically told no. The whole thing made me so sad, particularly because I remember McKibben speaking to my freshman class on his book we all read, and because we were stuck in a hot, sweaty gym with a rather heavy book (as in, the material, not the book itself), he kind of got ignored by most people. And trying to sort out the fifty interested students in a room of 1000 or however many it was is not really a simple task. Anyway. The whole thing just makes me depressed for the state of our politics. I don't understand why people want to spend so much money on stuff and on keeping things the way they are instead of helping people who need help, helping the WORLD that needs help. I don't know. Maybe that's my bias of too many years of marianist catholic education speaking. I'm too hopeful, I suppose.


Cats drawn as Marvel characters! Adorable. And hilarious. Particularly Spidey and the Sandman.

OKgo's new video to encourage the adoption of shelter pets. Amazing as usual.

Surprise! Facebook is fucking with you again. And this is why I keep all my info private except to people I know.

NEWSIES IS GOING TO BROADWAY, hilariousyesfantasticyesssss.

If superheros were hipsters. I particularly like PBRman. Also I feel like Spiderman isn't that far from Tobey McGuire Spiderman because DEAR LORD DO I HATE HIM. (Also, LOL at Aquaman--Northwesterners are a silly people. I learned that this summer.)

Mysterious civilization hidden in the Amazon--I think this is the same thing (SPOILER ALERT!) Lost City of Z talks about. BUT NOBODY KNOWS. It's fascinating.

Carnivorous plants dwndling across US; I wonder if this might have anything to do with all the bugkiller sprays we use? (No idea, just a thought.)

Shark attack survivors team up to save sharks.

ATHLETE'S FOOT MEDICATION COULD CURE WHITE NOSE SYNDROME! Finally, a hint of good news on that front.

Bug people are crazy. So are geologists.

Some foreign memes for you. I particularly like Makmende, for some reason. I suppose it's like Chuck Norris, but cooler, because Chuck Norris has kind of turned out to be a douche. (Clint Eastwood = cooler than Chuck Norris.)

A really good article about building the mosque. It sums up my feelings on the subject pretty well.

Where can you find Ned and Chuck, Henry Jones (Sr.), and (old school!) Zaphod Beeblebrox? Cons, of course. (Those PD outfits are fantastic, though, seriously.)

Interesting bit of Raiders trivia.

Oh my god, remember the ad for Iron Man 2 where Pepper smooches Tony's helmet, and it wasn't in the movie, and everybody got upset? I present to you--THE ALTERNATE OPENING:



(Fan. fucking. tastic. Why did they not do this one, now?)

And another fantastic short.


Star Wars yoga, absolutely hilarious. And rather clever.

Obscure Taco Bell trivia! A.k.a. the random shit I will bring up in conversation that may eventually lead to me singing the Gordita Anthem. This, in fact, happened this week despite me finding the article months ago, although it did not lead to Gordita-anthemizing, which is a shame.

Here is a fantastic interview with Patrick Stewart, and within it is a fantastically creepy tidbit of their interpretation of Macbeth, ( which I am cutting for the rare case of spoilers )

Is that not fantastically Halloween-y in the best manner? It absolutely is.

First of all, this article is rather old. Second, I doubt it is more than tongue-in-cheek coincidence, and three, Hex of the Hydra sounds godawful. Like the books series.

OH MY GOD. So I was watching the new Sherlock Holmes (not for the first time), but I also decided to watch the bonus material. Apparently they decided Jude Law was more of the ladies' man than RDJ, so they took to calling him Hotson on set.

omg. Hotson.

I can't even. It's hilarious. Anythus.


Much like Rule 34 of the internets, I surmise there must be a similar rule about blogs and personal interests. If you have thought of it, someone, somewhere, has already posted about it online. There is a cool blog called Strange Maps that posts, well, non-generic maps. This particular post has some interesting material on worldviews. It's rather fascinating, but my main point of this whole thing is that the Bulgarians think Poles are all sexy fembots.

I. Don't. Even. Know.






What I do know is that I need to post things more often because I have AT LEAST this many more links piled up in my Google Reader waiting for me to take action. And FIVE MORE old posts on my desktop from before I left this summer! Luckily those posts actually have some real content, like some book reviews.

So, real stuff now, we went to the Yellow Springs Street Festival today. I got an awesome monster shirt, a necklace for my medusa costume, and a beaverfelt antique collapsible tophat! The sad part is I got home and realized the tophat is too small :( BUT I refuse to get rid of it for the time being. I also walked RIGHT PAST Dave Chappelle without even noticing at first, who was saying that the street fair was "like Yellow Springs normally, but gayer". Which... I don't know what that means? Because it's almost the opposite. All the out-of-town people come to visit for the day, so the percentage of hippies is decreased by at least some...

Also my sister finally found the CORRECT version of the Taco Bell Gordita Anthem (thank you, 1998) and I downloaded it for the sake of posterity. POSTERITY I TELL YOU.



(begins at 1:40ish if it doesn't play correctly.)

[EDIT] If I had been paying attention or had any creative/organizational method of linkspamming (Captain Obvious Hint: I don't) I would have posted the Ghostbusters/Rick Moranis thing followed by the carnivorous plants thing followed by the Newsies thing. Points to you if you know how those three are related.

Alas, I did not, and I also need to post this in the case I missed posting it before:



Also-also, tomorrow is 42 DAY as in, the date is binary for 42 (101010), and it happens only once every hundred years, and tomorrow we are getting together to watch the Hitchhiker's Guide movie, probably have a Vogon poetry reading, and get our brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. Coincidentally that is the name of my ipod and there will be no citruses anywhere near my electronics, thankyouverymuch. (I've taken to naming my electronic devices after science fiction things, or other related items; this new lappy is HELPeR486.)

Also-also-also, I am very afraid for this Pan-galactic Gargleblaster recipe, which is, essentially, take Everclear, cut with liquors:

...er, scratch that. I may be looking at the wrong recipe. Anyway, there's a lot of alcohol, plus a little bit of mixers, add olive, et voila.

If I weren't so convinced I'll be smashed rather quickly, I'd throw in a gin & tonic to boot. Maybe I'll pour one out for my gpa who seemed delighted about the affair but clearly can't make it (and probably shouldn't be consuming high levels of alcohols).

Idk why but I've been tab-hoarding for weeks. As a result, running roughly 220 tabs was causing firefox to crash constantly. So, here is several days worth of tab writeups, which might mean whatever I wrote sounds a few days old. That would be because it is, but it's probably not too important.

( LOTS of articles )

( a second set, many more articles )

...I read a lot.

So I saw Zombieland. It was hilarious and adorable and awesome but horrifyingly more gory than I expected it to be. Which, it struck me, is exactly how I would expect the zombie apocalypse to be in real life. A horrifying version of normal life.

So in the car ride home, Jon and Jerome and I started trying to determine the source of the "viral" zombie, as it seems to have come out of nowhere. The old-fashioned zombie, the one we all knew growing up, was the cursed dead back from the grave. Which I think my only exposure to was the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror III, and the fact I remembered the number off the top of my head is rather odd, considering I only remember the zombies and none of the plot. Anyway. So in the 90s zombies were still culturally the "undead", right? So, we wondered, where did these apocalyptic stories come from?

I did some research (Wikipedia) and what I can seem to determine is that though the term zombie grew out of sheer numbers into a genre, all the first zombie media had little in common. Night of the Living Dead being the first "hit", it had back-from-the-dead "ghouls" that ate human flesh. But earlier things labeled with "zombies" were straight up voodoo stories (sometimes not even dead but just bewitched and therefore mindless drones), or Lovecraftian horror films, or even alien films. Also, there is an interesting tie to Frankenstein and vampire tales, which apparently both stem from Germanic tales of the undead, which is interesting considering the precursor to the modern "virus zombie", the "undead zombie", was based off of I Am Legend (the original book)'s spread-by-disease-mutated-vampires.

So, there is a lull in zombie pop culture in the 80s except for the Asian underground film attraction to it which is interesting considering they used them as warrior army thralls, which I find fascinating considering the modern Asian army stereotype of the terra cotta army. Completely fascinating ties; zombies seem to come from so many sources, and yet, have little unifying description!

Anyway, so the modern zombies didn't seem to come about popularly until 2002 when both Resident Evil and 28 Days Later were released. Which seem to come out of NOWHERE. I can't find anything to make the jump into these apocalyptic fictions. Some zombie lit gained popularity in the 90s, but nothing outstanding that seems to have lead the way for these movies. I mean, maybe the King novel (Cell?) but I am lost as to how that led to the EXPLOSION of the "new zombie" genre.

WHICH, and here is my main point, if you asked the modern person to explain a zombie to you, it seems to me you get two descriptions: "old-fashioned quote-unquote 'slow'" zombies and "modern apocalyptic 'fast'" zombies. How can a definitive cultural icon--the fast, modern zombie--be around for only seven-ish years and SO MUCH DEFINE A GENRE? A HORROR FILM ICON? This is completely unfathomable to me, and hence, I find it fascinating.

On a completely different type of fascinating, the fact that my once and only panic attack involved zombies, before I knew what a modern zombie was, and that Becky Belknap thought I was "a weirdo" who was obsessed with zombies (this being before I knew what a modern zombie was and hence had no outstanding interest in the zombie/horror genre) simply from a comment saying "I'm so tired I feel like a zombie". This is facsinating because my whole life I have never been attached to any horror genre and I dislike gore to the extreme, but the new survivalist popularity of the genre has completely hooked me. I obsessed over survival tactics when I was little. I read My Side of the Mountain and dreamed of running away so I could live in the woods. (That is to say, day-dreamed. Very different than my actual sleep-dreaming. Of which tonight I will probably have very violent or escapist ones, though still no sign of nightmares.)

ANYWAY. On top of all that I have discovered that unique typography is completely awesome. The Ethiopian sarcasm mark is rather saddening in that it looks like the Spanish inverted exclamation point, BUT in even better news the French have a "secondary level of understanding" mark for sarcasm or irony, a backwards question mark, which is amazing. Except that sometimes I think sarcasm is best left its facade, because it separates the over-serious from those with a sense of understanding or a sense of humor.

Though the French came up with a lot of weird marks. Authority, rhetorical questions, love accents, et cetera?! Oh, you, French.

No school today. This is... amazing. I still have a lot to work on, but I least get a tiny break. It especially helps because last night I was freaking out because I couldn't get to any computer to finish my homework; I'd spent four hours in the lab and came home for dinner. Candice's computer died too (just last night), and Sarah was sick and already asleep and Brittany was using hers. So. I kind of had a meltdown about homework last night. (Just because it was one more thing on the pile, you know?)

Yeah, so. I've been in the lab for about three hours now, but that's okay, I'm getting things done and it's quiet. It's a bit odd in the sense that I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the building currently... But I like it that way.

It's very bright outside with all the snow, and I definitely was kind of blinded when I walked inside. BUT this is the kind of snow to have, I'm telling you. A foot or so of it, very kickable, and still pretty warm outside, enough that it would be very nice to be outside. Now if only I didn't have so much to do, correct? Yes.

BUT, a bunch of linkspam that has piled up a bit with my computer woes. (Ah, poo. I am no longer the only one in here. Someone else just walked in.)

The immortal jellyfish... Quite cool, really. I'm not very afraid of them being our next overlords because I'm pretty sure it's going to be some octopodian thing and I will ~freak the fuck out~

An adorable Barney and Robin background. I am very sad I don't have my laptop right now because it would most definitely be the desktop...

The Henchman's Helper? I'm not exactly sure what's going on here but I am intrigued.

"Milky Way over Mauna Kea" which should be more accurately titled "Milky Way over Haleakala". Haleakala is the volcano in the foreground. (Still active, though it hasn't erupted in such a long time they thought it was dead. Or is dormant the right word? I think dormant means it's active but not currently erupting...) Anyway, you can see Mauna Kea (part of the Big Island) poking through in the backgroud. It's cool to think I've been at this view, roughly... Damn I miss Hawaii. Holy crap though, look at all that light pollution... That makes me so sad, really.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I would say that this would be the only way I'd read the book, but I suspect that as much as I dislike it, it's noewhere near as bad as Wuthering Heights. So. I will only say that you just have to be aware of where zombies are coming at you from... (Now there's a lovely ending-a-sentence-with-a-preposition, as dislegal as it is.)

Green grafitti. Very cool stuff.

Business currently hiring; I would work for Google...

Well, you have to face it, regardless: the Mayans were very skilled with figuring out their calendar. And regardless of the outcome, I will be having a party. By the way, anyone know when the LHC is supposed to come back on?

Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. I want to go there. Mechanics such as these mystify me... Sorry for that unintentional alliteration. (Worse than punning, methinks...)

Ah, so, back to work for me... And back to that tiki blog I found. Good stuff, that.


By the way, is anyone else excited for the Pink Panther movie, or am I the only one? (Tee-eye-double-guh-er.)