August 8, 2014 this was my Face book status:
As I was making my morning coffee today I had a horrible thought. When the Zombie Apocalypse happens there will be a shortage of COFFEE! The reason for this is that the workers in the coffee bean fields will either be zombies who are spending their time eating humans, or they will be the humans being eaten. No time for the harvest in those circumstances! This brings me to a few very morbid facts and questions:
- How the hell am I gonna run without my JET FUEL?
- Zombies are not what they used to be. They are no longer the slow moving stupid creatures that they used to be. Remember those Hollywood movies where they moved slow but somehow managed to always catch up to the humans? I think that it was a lesson in how the turtle and the hare conflicted over their race and how the turtle won because “slow and steady wins the race”.
- Now Zombies are much different. They now move with super speed and have super power strength. How are we supposed to feel safe around THAT? Where do we go to hide?
- Rod told me while we were at the lake that we should perhaps plan on stealing a pontoon boat and load it up with supplies and anchor it in the middle of the lake. This is a flawed plan. First off, how do we steal a pontoon? I don’t even know how to drive one! And then there is the problem of them moving fast now. If Hollywood has only now decided to divulge this fact to us, then what else are they holding back? Can zombies now swim? Nothing like human-sized piranhas! Then what happens when we run out of supplies? And what happens when the lake freezes over? Then they could just WALK ON BOARD!!! He should know this stuff. He’s the one who watches The Walking Dead!
- Although I have some pretty ninja-like moves, I have NEVER killed a Zombie. I don’t watch The Walking Dead. Can a zombie be killed? Do they ever die? Is it like, if we behead them, they just put their heads back on and keep on walking? Are they like the Energiser Bunny? On CRACK?
- If I get bitten, will I become a zombie? You can tell from that question that I am completely ignorant about zombies. I have never encountered one, nor have I ever had a craving for brains. So now I need a crash course. Can zombies be telepathically controlled? Because if they can, then no worries! If I get bitten and become a zombie, will I end up being the most dangerous of them all, considering the telepathy and shaman magic and all that stuff? I would hate that. Talk about perfectly good gifts being corrupted!
So now here I am thinking of ways to grow coffee beans in my back yard. Is that even LEGAL? If so, what are my chances of growing it successfully, considering our short growing season? Is there some sort of super coffee bean that will not only grow fast in a short growing season but also super charge my morning coffee? If there is, then I’m all over that!
So then a face book friend posted:
Ok here are the most important rules to surviving Zombieland. Get comfy :
Rule 1: Cardio: This one comes up in Zombieland and clearly makes a lot of sense. How many fat people do you see at the end of the world when its zombies doing the ending?
Rule 2: Beware of Bathrooms: Any good apocalyptic zombie survivor should know better than going into a bathroom, small closet or any other small room with one way in or out. (Perhaps this is what the bathroom sign at Humpty’s was talking about…see the blog The Bermuda Triangle of Saskatchewan).
Rule 3: Seatbelts: It’s a safe bet unless you’re a complete idiot (see rule #7) you’re not going to travel on foot in a zombie outbreak. So when travelling on four wheels, wear your seat belt. Nothing worse than finding yourself ejected out of your car into the loving and oh so hungry arms of zombies.
Rule 4: Double tap: Carrying a gun is a great idea but it should never be your primary weapon. (Well that is good, because I don’t own a gun…so I guess that I am screwed again…) When you do end up using it for that last-minute ‘oh shit’ moment remember to double tap. If you’re attacked by zombies why skimp? One bullet more in the head will go a long way to ensuring your survival.
Rule 5: No Attachments: This is a tough one but you cannot have attachments. If you have kids or a wife you’re less likely to survive than the gal or guy who has no attachments and nothing slowing him or her down. Attachments lead to bonehead decisions like ‘going back into the room’ or ‘nobody gets left behind’.
Rule 6: Travel in a Group: The best way to increase your odds of survival when travelling in a zombie outbreak is to make sure you’re a travelling buffet. Going it alone gives the zombies no choices but to eat you. Going it with the old man with the limp, the little kid who can’t run and the middle-aged woman with the bum leg gives the zombies more options and you better odds.
Rule 7: Keep the Morons Close at Hand: One of the most sure-fire ways of making sure you survive is keeping the less intelligent as close at hand as possible. When you find somebody who asks you, ‘What’s going on? What Happened?’ those are the ones you want with you. That way when the zombies come they are likely too stupid to realise it’s not Amway calling and run.
For more guidance watch Zombieland!
Although I thanked her for her sharing of these precious rules, I was unable to admit that Rod and I had begun watching Zombieland just a few days before. I got about a minute and a half into it and said, “Nope. Can’t do it.” He laughed and asked if I was serious and then looked at me and saw what I was doing. Suffice it to say that I was in a curled up position with my hands over my eyes and wishing that I had another set of hands for my ears. It reminded me of the position I take (I’ll call it “fetal”) when the house alarm goes off unexpectedly. I am sure that thing will disable ANY intruders and leave them sucking their thumbs and begging whoever will listen to them to “please make it stop!” He turned off the TV. Granted, he was also laughing hysterically at me, but at least he was doing so while he was reaching for the remote to turn it off. I don’t mind being laughed at as long as the torture eventually comes to an end. I love that guy! Just the mere turning off of the TV earned him major brownie points as my hero. How I repaid him for such a valiant act I will leave to your twisted and perverted imaginations…..but, rest assured, it was even BETTER THAN THAT.
This is also when I realised that it is not so much the gore of zombie movies that bothers me. I can take grey brain matter, blood spatter and guts pouring out any time. It was the SOUND. A couple of years after attempting Zombieland with Rod, we were explaining to his son why I don’t like The Walking Dead. As I was explaining that even just hearing the zombies go all zombie-ish bothers me, I suddenly had a memory flood through. It was a compete revelation, I tell ya! It made me realise that I had somehow blocked that memory for pretty much the better part of 40 years! I think it was because of the trauma. So…here is the memory.
I am walking from the barn to the house on the farm where I grew up. I notice this dog coming out of the bush. I look at said dog and, being the totally friendly kid I was, I said, “Hi there! Who are you?” The dog looked at me with the strangest expression in its eyes (one that I hope I never see again as long as I live). It started to snarl, then the snarling got to that point and calibre like the sound the zombies make in the movies. It charged at me. I turned and ran towards the house, screaming ‘MOOOOOOOMMMMM!” The door to the house opened and there was my mom with a rifle in her hand. The dog was right behind me. I dove…literally leapt, arms outstretched, flying through the air, through the doorway. My mom fired the gun. I felt the bullet wiz past me as I was flying through the air. I heard the dog whimper as it dropped to the ground and I landed on the floor of the hallway. Then it snarled some more. By this time I had turned onto my back and was crawling backwards along the hallway into the kitchen, kicking away whatever may be still hot on my heals. A second shot. Then total silence. My heart was pounding out of my chest. My mom was standing over the dog’s corpse and assessing it. Then she called to my older brother to get a set of gloves and help her move this animal to the fire pit so they could incinerate its body because it had something called “mange”. I did not know at that time what that was, but apparently it was an illness that made animals go not only rabid but also start rotting from the inside out. So basically I was being hunted by a zombie dog! My brother put on gloves and webt to help my mom pick up the dog (totally out of character for him, but that is another story). As he did, the leg he grabbed tore right off. He immediately projectile vomited. They decided to shovel the carcass onto a wheel barrow and take it to the fire pit. The stench off of that thing as it burned was totally rank. My mom said she wanted to burn it because otherwise if some other animal picked at it, then that animal would contract the mange. Gross. So it is not just that if it bit you, then you would become a zombie, that could happen even if you bit IT. She assured me that the mange can transfer if it bit me. I went to the bathroom, completely stripped naked, and checked myself out in the full length mirror to make sure that I had not even been nicked. I didn’t think I had, but I needed to make sure. After that I obviously subconsciously decided to just tuck that memory away and never (hopefully) visit it again.
But then in explaining this to my step-son, I had to visit it again. It is not that, in doing so, I am suddenly okay with zombie movies. I am still not. But at least I know what the trigger is for the total fear and heart palpitations that take place whenever one is watching zombie movies, even in the background while I am doing something else. I now play music in another room till that stuff is done.
So there you have it. Come to think of it, this might have been why I took up fire arms as a kid and became a crack shot! But I still don’t own a gun. I don’t want to. So I guess that when the zombies attack I will have to rely upon my mystical charm to survive the apocalypse.