Yeah. The internet is full of slowly creeping (and moaning) memes about homeless people trying to eat the arms off babies and folks high on "bath salts" biting the noses off their friends. Given the currently popular geek-fed (pun intended) zombie fad, it's no surprise that this blather is getting tons of cyberplay and everybody's easing into a slowly-building freakout. Goddess knows, before long the damn presidential candidates are going to be running on anti-zombie platforms.

Let me set something straight: the way I see things, WE'RE the zombies.

I'm trying to make my way in the world just like everybody else, and just like everybody else I sometimes (oh, hell... let's say "often") manage to justify my own desires through some convoluted set of rationales, even when it's to the detriment of myself or my loved ones. Thankfully, this is usually a minor issue, like when I have one extra helping of bacon when I know I should really eat an apple instead.

Sometimes, it's a bad thing, like when I sadly admit that it would really rule to have one of those Toyota FJ Cruisers when I know they drink gas by the barrel. I can just see myself toolin' down the highway in one of those bad boys, aviator shades on my fat face, Popcorn Chicken and a Sun-Drop Cola cradled between my fat thighs. Yeah, I'd be cool...

This is not what we need. We need to stop acting like zombies.

We read the same news, read the same blogs, watch the same movies, eat the same foods, listen to the same music, wear the same clothes, lust for the same wireless devices, vote for the same criminals, buy the same crappy furniture from Ikea, scramble for the same dollars, pray to the same Gods.

Stop it. Just stop it.

I'm speaking to myself as much as anyone else. When my inflated artist's ego is telling me how awesome I am, I have to admit that I'm just as bad or worse as everybody else. I watch Jon Stewart; I never watch Fox News. I listen to Led Zeppelin; I never listen to John Coltrane. I read Robert Anton Wilson and Herman Melville; I never read Toni Morrison. I like bacon; I don't like broccoli.

It doesn't matter to me what your inclinations are. My profile is, after all, pretty diverse: I'm a long-haired, hippie-commie, gun-totin', bacon-eatin', socialist-agnostic, Cadillac cowboy who reads both comic books and Shakespeare. Try to fit that square peg into your round hole, you survey-takin' bastards! I'm pretty proud of myself, but still... I'm as addicted to my habits and preferences as anybody. I should eat spinach, wear a suit-and-tie, listen to jazz, cut my hair (Sorry. That ain't gonna happen.), go see a chick-flick, and go to mass. Even if I abhor the lot of it, at least it'll give me the courage of my convictions, and prove to me that I'm not just following a herd right off a cliff.


Believe it or not, I'm actually not trying to change anybody's mind about anything here. The world might or might not be a better place if everybody thought like me, but I know it'd be a heck of a lot more boring. I'm just trying to encourage something that seems to be missing - or Goddess forbid, actually discouraged - in America today: thinking for yourself.

So: stop reading this blog! Turn off your computer! Go play in the sunshine! (Or, if you are playing in the sunshine... you know what to do.) And if you get the urge to chew on the babysitter's leg... stop yourself and report to the nearest CDC office at once!