Being "Immune" to the Zombie Infection is Just a Nice Way of Saying You have No Brain

A while ago, I posted a review of the stupidest book I'd ever read. That was until I read the sequel, The Dead Tossed Waves. What can I say? I'm a competionist when it comes to books, even if it's garbage. And, yes, the sequel was garbage, but not in the fun What the hell are you doing?? How have you survived this long, you stupid whore?? kind of way like the first one was.

It was boring. In fact, I skimmed maybe even most of it. There were a lot of pages where I read one sentence, just to be sure the author was still describing the same thing. It took twenty pages for two people to cross a bridge. It's like the Dragon Ball Z of trite post-apocolyptic zombie romance.

The basic story takes place maybe almost thirty years after the first one. Stupid Whore is grown up and has a daughter of her own. Stupid Whore Junior is the opposite of her mother--she doesn't give a hoot about traveling to another place just for the hell of it, doesn't think it's a good idea to run through zombie territory for any reason, and she's blond. Her friends try and convince her to hop the fence with them to hang out at the abandoned amusement part, to which she says screw that... until the boy she likes asks her to come.

So she does. And they all die. Because you don't hop the damn zombie fence, you retards.

Well, obviously, she doesn't die. And neither does her boyfriend, even though he's been bitten. It turns out he's immune to the virus, and is now a carrier. Which means that they cannot make out any more. Which leads to many scenes with them pressed up against each other and breathing heavy.

...

Anyway.

They run away together. With some other guy who just randomly came out of the woods and decided to start following Stupid Whore Junior around. She spends a lot of time breathing heavy with him too. In fact, she alternates. And she doesn't even seem to feel bad about it. Can't choose between the two guys you're traveling with? There can be only one solution: Dry. Hump. Everything.

Oh, and Stupid Whore Junior murders someone before she leaves. Like straight up stabs him in the torso and flees. So they run into the forest, being chased by some army guys. The army guys mostly want to bring in the infected but immune guy. Why? Because the zombies won't eat him, which means he can kill them easily. He can, like, walk into the middle of a group of them, hand one of them a bomb, and then walk out. Or he can go get supplies without being attacked.

At this point I'm thinking... this party basically consists of a girl who murdered someone so that she could flee and be with her boyfriends, and a guy who could really help the anti-zombie effort but doesn't feel like it. And I honestly don't think the author realizes she's turned her protagonists into the bad guys here.

Despite this, for some reason I cannot fathom, they're running away from the army guys and towards the capitol city... which I'm pretty sure is where the army comes from. Which probably makes the least sense of anything that has happened in either of these books. They don't even get there by the end of the book. It's just, like, over.

There are, however, some highlights to this flee-and-chase fiasco:

After making out with Random Tag-Along guy, he's all smiling and walking down the path backwards... and steps right off the edge of a cliff. Seriously. All this fleeing from the army and from zombies, and he's done in because he can't watch where he's going. They pull him up, but his leg is broken so... they leave him and move the heck on, of course.

This is good, though, because it leads to one of my favorite moments in fine literature of all time. So Stupid Whore Junior and her infected boyfriend are still being chased by army guys when they come across a school bus. Upon further inspection, the bus is full of first graders in matching little blue sweaters. Hundred-year-old zombie first graders. The author even describes how they look almost alive and have pig tails. How do our protagonists react? They start picking up the zombie first graders and chucking them at the army guys.

The "good guys" pick up. Dead six-year-olds. And throw them. At soldiers.

The whole scene was just beautiful in its insanity.

So the third book is out, and, on the one hand, I'm kind of excited to find out what shenanigans the author manages to conjure up this time, but, on the other, I'm not sure I have many more brain cells left to spare.

You Deserve to Be Eaten by Zombies

Pop quiz!

The barriers against the zombies is breeched, and your village is overrun. You manage to escape with your older brother, best friend, betrothed, one true love love, a random first grader, and your dog. After a few days, you find another town, but it has also been overrun by zombies. You and your love barricade yourself in what appears to be the nicest house in town, while the rest of your party gets up in a tree house. There is a platform on the roof that once had a rope bridge to the treehouses, but it has been cut and now hangs limp.

Inside the house you discover a very large supply of weapons, including several crates of arrows for the many available crossbows, chests that may contain the secrets you've been searching for all of your life, and enough food to last you and your sweet darling several years. Hundreds of zombies are tirelessly clawing at the house, trying to get in.

You spend your days:
A) shooting zombies out the window with the other five human members of your party, thinning their numbers in a matter of days.
B) searching the chests for the answers you've been looking for your entire life.
C) attempting to repair the bridge to the treehouses before the zombies break though.
D) sitting on the roof, daydreaming about the ocean.

If you picked D, then you are equally as retarded as every character from The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Which started out great (I'm into post-apocalyptic zombie crap, okay), other than the weird concept that, hundreds of years in the future, towns are ruled by groups of women, yet female citizens are treated like property with floor-length skirts and betrothals and the like. Math that out.

Stupidest book ever. Stupid on every level. Except the zombies. I love zombies.

Also, since you're never going to read it (please don't), I'm just gonna say that the main character is basically responsible for the death of everyone. The main character kills like twenty zombies in an hour out of boredom, but that's the only attempt they make to actually do anything until the zombies begin to flood the house. Then they run into the attic, where her homeboy finally starts fixing the bridge. I'm practically screaming at my Nook "Pile the fracking chests full of books and newspapers on top of the fracking attic door!!!" but, no, she decides it's a good damn time to pick up a copy of The New York Times (yes, really) and marvel at the pictures of the city. She's seriously like "Lover, stop trying to finally save us please and look at this picturesque skyline!"

They get across the bridge, and promptly go back to doing nothing useful for a day or so, at which point someone finally starts killing off the zombies.

That someone is the six-year-old. He accidentally started a fire, and it turns out the only thing more flammable than treehouses is zombies. That's right, the only useful characters are the little boy and, though I didn't go into it, the dog.

Faced with either burning to death or being zombie-snacks, what's-his-face sacrifices himself in order to clear a path out of town for the rest of them. Before he dies, he apologizes for not being enough to make his precious little idiot happy, and makes her promise that she'll get to her precious fracking ocean. Which is all well and good with her since she was already planning on leaving him to escape on her own and go see the ocean.

Did I mention that she stole this guy from her best friend, and that this guy is her fiancé's brother? Way. To be. A bitch.

At least she has the decency to decapitate him before insisting that everyone else follow her to the ocean.

So they're almost to the ocean, but there's lots of zombies in their way. Everyone else is like "What the hell is wrong with you that you think we're going to forge a river of zombies just to see an ocean full of even more zombies??" but she's like "My mom said it's salty! I effing love salt!" and seriously barrels into the middle of zombie territory.

She makes it maybe ten yards before she realizes she is completely hosed.

But it's okay, because he brother dies saving her stupid fracking face, and then she keeps moving, not giving her fiancé, best friend, dog, or the small child a second thought.

And then she gets to the ocean. And it's big and it's salty. And there are hundreds of zombies on the beach. And she is somehow satisfied with this outcome.

If I ever run into Carrie Ryan at a Barnes and Noble, I will shotgun her in the face. And I won't forget to double tap.

Showdown: Duck Face vs. Vilena-Style

If there isn't already a word that means the complete opposite of photogenic, then I should invent one to describe myself. Still, I try to avoid making myself look worse. So I really don't get the whole "duck face" thing, obviously.

A while ago I became aware of another odd photo trend, this time from Russia. It's called Vilena-style, apparently so named because this woman, named Vilena, posted the following image on a social networking site and instantly became all kinds of popular.

Uhm, what?

I cannot decide if this is better or worse than the duck face. Duck face is, essentially, purposefully making your face less attractive. Vilena-style, on the other hand, makes you look stupid, but... at least it shows off some booty. I saw a couple of sites where guys were like "Ooooh yeah, Vilena-style," but I've never seen something similar for duck face.

Let us compare them directly.

Duck Face vs. Vilena-style

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am just... so confused. And is that a pig in the last one? Most of these girls are probably good-looking, right?

I don't know. I can't decide which set is more ridiculous.

Duck face does have its own music video though.

I Graduated College and All I Got was this Lousy Sense of Entitlement

I have my sulky face on. In fact, it's been showing up more and more often. Today I slept in, rode my bike, practiced Japanese, swam in my pool, and sulked through every moment of all of it. It's the grown-ups again. They promised me that, if I went to college, I'd be rewarded at the end with a lucrative career. Instead I spend my days murdering dust bunnies and cursing the man who, in that smooth voice of his, claimed that the Dyson "doesn't eva lose suction." There's a reason that guy is completely bald. Damn him and damn them all!

It's all very conflicting. On the one hand, damn them all... but, on the other hand, I did just spend my day sleeping in, riding my bike, practicing a foreign language for fun, and swimming in my pool. And housewife cleaning-type things of course. The dust bunnies.

I try to enjoy my current situation, but then I feel guilty for feeling happy while other people, like Poncho, have to wake up early every morning and spend entirely too many of their precious hours working. And then I feel guilty again for not appreciating my abundance of leisure time while other people, like Poncho, have to wake up early every morning and spend entirely too many of their precious hours working.

It's a vicious cycle of shame and guilt. And it's all the grown-ups' fault.

I've been unemployed for thirteen months now. I've applied for many, many jobs.

As I see it, the following things are preventing me from joining the ranks of the employed:

1. If I'm being honest, I could have a job by now if I were willing to take one that paid me less that I'm receiving on unemployment. It's the sense of entitlement. I graduated college. I'm qualified to teach in any one of the fifty states. And, for a couple of years, I did, and they paid me well. Now the only jobs I seem to be able to get near are barely willing to pay me more than minimum wage; significantly less than I made working day care in college. At times I feel bad about taking money for doing nothing, while at other times I'm too miffed about being laid off from a government job that was supposed to be stable enough to carry me through the next forty years of my life. I could, when it comes down to it, spend all day working to get less money per week than the government will give me for doing nothing. But I'm not a moron.
2. Many, many jobs I've applied for, when I've followed-up, have given me responses which boil down to, "Just kidding! We weren't really looking to fill a position; we just like to leave job openings all over the place to taunt people like you. Isn't that funny? Ha!" And then I call my psychic friends to put a curse on them.
3. In this economy, many employers are more interested in your work experience than your education. Which is the exact opposite of what my high school counselor promised me when she convinced me to delay entering the job market to further my education. At least that's who I'm putting the blame on today; tomorrow it'll probably go back to my mother.
4. The job market is flooded with desperate people, and, as such, I am often told that a potential employer chose someone cheaper or more qualified than me. Which is the real suck part of the whole thing, because what that means is I really am worth barely more than minimum wage.

Or maybe I just plain suck and never realized it before. It's possible.

But the real tragedy in this whole thing is that I have nothing more interesting to write about in my blog. It's Nook, manga, Sims, and whining on the menu until something happens. I miss Japan.

Doing Bad Things

I have returned from the great state of Oklahoma. And, yes, I actually do mean "great." It was surprisingly lovely and green, and the Sonics out there served wads of fried cheddar cheese.

Also, a Peanut was born!

I arrived back in California in a good mood, though I have found myself unable to hang on to that mood and am now officially in full grump-mode.

Coming home to an empty house is even less pleasant than I anticipated. After being with someone for over eight years you kind of get used to having them around, but Poncho is on tour for five more weeks. Ugh. I'm trying to convince myself that it's fun to have so much alone time to just indulge in my favorite things and sleep diagonally across the bed, but so far it's just not that great.

Also, the cable company was supposed to fix the window while I was gone, but they totally did not. And our last apartment sent us our move-out paperwork without our deposit, which means I'm going to have to spend a better part of my afternoon calling and yelling at people for being bumholes.

And now my personal favorite: I got the bill(s) for my sprained ankle. Sprained. Not mangled by a riding mower and surgically rebuilt, just sprained. I got one bill for $12, another for $200, and yet another for $1400. That's like $1600 for them to give me and X-ray and a pair of crutches and sending me off.

So that's been my life in the two days since returning to California: loneliness, dealing with jerkfaces, and being financially sodomized by the healers of America.


And I caught up on Desperate Housewives. This season is pretty good so far. I've always liked Julie. I'm holding out hope that the attacker is Zach and not Nick. I would so be down for that.

The Great Wiener Debate

I recently got involved in a discussion about circumcisions, as I am wont to do from time to time, being a lover of all things Naked Man and all. Each time this happens I find more reasons to support my belief that the circumcision of infants is one of the most deplorable and barbaric practices our society engages in. I mean, really, think about it. Cutting off a piece of a dude's wiener just seems like a pretty damn cold thing to do right after he's born, you know?

Before I go any further though, I want to say that, firstly, there's noting inherently wrong with body modification if that's what you choose to do. My problem here is choosing it for someone else who isn't old enough to make that choice for themselves. Secondly, if you do make that choice, as a parent, I do think it's a bad choice; however... no parent is perfect and no one bad choice makes you a Bad Parent. All the Bad Parents I know made lots and lots of bad choices before they earned that coveted title. (ProTip: Taking your child with you to the abortion clinic to be sure they don't become a big sister earns you big points.)

Part 1: Modern Day Pro-Circumcision Arguments
So during these discussions about circumcision, the same pro-circumcision arguments always come up, yet they amaze me every time. I mean it's not like I'm talking to morons here (usually)--it's smart, rational people who are making these easily-refutable arguments with straight faces. Just yesterday I brought this up with one of my best friends, and, in spite of being one of the most open-minded people I know, she got all squeamish and declared she'd totally get her son circumcised because a natural penis is "icky." It's enough to make me go cross-eyed.

Argument 1: It's cleaner.
The problem with this argument is that, here in America, we have this crazy thing called Indoor Plumbing. It's amazing and it allows you to wash your freaking wiener. It's not that complicated, people. Lady bits have all of these crazy folds and caverns, yet we're not shaving of the "useless" parts in order to shorten our shower time! In fact, we Americans kind of freak the heck out at countries who do practice female circumcision, regardless of their reasons or methods.

Argument 2: It looks nicer.
It looks nicer because that's what you're used to seeing here in America. Until recently, circumcision was extremely common, peaking in the 1950s and only really notably declining since the 1990s. If you were in a country where circumcision was not commonly practiced (as in, basically any other country anywhere), you probably would not feel this way. This is called cultural bias, and is no reason to bring scissors near your Little Man's little man.

Argument 3: I want my son to have a peenie like mine and/or do not want him to be made fun of. (Penn Jillette has a hilarious video rant about it here if you don't mind his potty mouth.)
Firstly, I just don't feel that teaching your children conformity just for the sake of conformity is a good lesson for them. This argument basically amounts to "everybody's doing it," which parents spend a lot of time teaching their teenagers is not a reason to do anything. And, in fact, not everybody is doing it. As I previously stated, the practice of circumcision has been in decline for several decades. Currently only just over 50% of males get their thingies snipped. It's not cool anymore. Sorry. Maybe we could teach our boys to smoke earlier; that'll help 'em fit in.

Arguement 4: He's a baby; it's not like he's going to remember that it hurts and he won't miss it.
I... Really?! This is seriously supposed to justify removing a significant portion of a child's penis??

I disapprove.

Part 2: Modern Day Anti-Circumcision Arguments
Now that we know that a penis is dishwasher safe and that conformity makes you a tool, there are very valid reasons as to let a young lad keep his foreskin.

To be brief, the penis head is very sensitive, and is naturaly a moist organ, much like the clitoris. Once the foreskin is removed, it becomes dry and sensitivity is decreased by a sometimes estimated 75%. As one unsuspecting and uncircumcised member said during the aforementioned discussion, "If I pull my foreskin back and try to do pretty much anything not related to sex, it's impossible. It's far too sensitive. The mere fact that circumcized guys are able to wear clothes is proof positive that it causes a serious loss of sensation."

This isn't to say that sex is necessarily four times better for men who are uncircumcised, but it does bring me to my next point.

Part 3: How Did Circumcision Become so Popular Among American Gentiles Anyway?
According to my research (found at the end of this post), circumcision began to be widely promoted during the Victorian era as a means to discourage masturbation. Isn't that fun? Throughout the years it has also been proven to cure wet dreams, bed wetting, urinary and rectal incontinence, tuberculosis, epilepsy, nervousness, abdominal neuralgia, "eye problems," blindness, deafness, dumbness/muteness, as well as prevent spinal paralysis or cuvature, clubfoot, black men from raping white women, urinary tract infections, penile and prostate cancer, tongue cancer, all STDs, cervical cancer, bladder and rectal cancer, and "immunity to nearly all physical and mental illness." This is science, people.

Or not. So basically all we're left with now is "it's pretty because it looks like Daddy's" and "I don't have to wash as thouroughly." It seems like people cling to these two reasons as though their very grip on reality depends on it.

Anyway, it feels good to have taken full inventory of my own thoughts on the matter. I just like to make informed decisions is all, and with all I know about the topic I know that my son(s) when I have him/them will have all natural ding-dongs.

Part 4: More Information
Where did I get this information? Many places, but I'll list my favorite and most readable ones here.

• Mutilation Nation - This is the first article I read on the topic, and found it to be very well-written and interesting. Warning: The points are illustrated, and the topic is penises. Penises in the name of education, of course.

• The Medicalization of Circumcision - This slideshow shows a timeline as well as a scale that shows the popularity of circumcision in the US, UK, and the world as they coincide with different "scientific" studies on the topic. There's one small drawing, but other than that it's weenie-free for the senstaive viewer.

• Circumcision and HIV - The latest trend in circumcision propoganda is that it'll prevent the spread of HIV. I'm pretty sure a condom and/or monogomy will work better, but whatev.

• Intact America - An organization dedicated to trying to figure out what these poor little weenies did to deserve being treated this way.

Note: I finally had an excuse to post pictures of weenies in my blog and I passed on the opportunity. I think that shows growth. I'm going to go do grown-up things like throw a dinner party or look at china patterns or something.

Final Score: 23 to 2; You Lose

Somewhere between my apartment and where I park my car lives a man and his family.

Many times, on my way to and from these two locations, I have passed by this man smoking, BBQing, or otherwise... being outside. I have passed by him twenty-five times, to be exact.

Of those twenty-five times, he has loudly drawn up a wad of phlegm in his throat and spit it on the ground twenty-three times.

This should be your face right now.

I call this man... Spitty Guy. Clever, I know.

Poncho is also in on this game and occassionally asks me for the current score. Recently we were walking and Poncho was about to announce that Spitty Guy had earned another point in his favor, but I held up my finger and, lo', Spitty Guy managed to squeeze one in just before we rounded the corner out of earshot. I have learned not to underestimate the volume at which Spitty Guy can hock.

I try to be fair when keeping score. I only counted it as one point when, the other day, Spitty Guy walked to the dumpster and back, spitting six times during the thirty-foot trip. I tried to convince myself to feel sorry for him, that he must have some sort of phlegm-producing disorder, but the seemingly-constant smoking is kind of a sympathy killer.

Call me a prude but I don't like watching people expel anything from their bodies, especially where I might walk through it.

Anyway, Spitty Guy, I'm calling it. Poncho and I will be fully moved out of this apartment in a week. You just got your second point yesterday (Congratulations!) and I think we should quit while you're ahead. Good luck and God speed.