A Delicacy of Eggs

Eggs are like writing.
No, seriously.
Look, I know, everything is like writing, but eggs are really like writing.
It's about the attitude.
I mean, it's only eggs, right?
Anyone can cook an egg.
That's how people feel about eggs, and it's true as far as that goes. There are certain things with eggs anyone ought to be able to do proficiently enough so that they're edible. Minimally. Hard boiled. Scrambled. Egg over hard. (Look, I didn't know what it was called; I had to look it up. Dumb name, and I never make them that way, because, basically, that's an unskilled way to make a fried egg.)
And people seem to think that "everyone has a story in them," which may or may not be true, but people say it all the time.
There's this attitude that anyone can write if only they sat down to do it.
Like anyone can make eggs.

But not everyone can make good eggs. If anyone and everyone could do it, diner eggs wouldn't need salt or hot sauce or ketchup. They would just be good and you could eat them without a bunch of augmentation. But when was the last time you had eggs at a diner that didn't taste like paper?
When's the last time you made eggs that didn't taste like paper?

The problem with eggs is that they actually take a lot of attention. That is, if you want them to be good, they do. They're only "easy" to make when you don't care what you're getting as the end product.

Let me give you an example:
I make what we in my house call fancy eggs. They're "fancy" because they're all creamy and stuff. In fact, they have cream in them.
And here's the problem with eggs:
A recipe won't get you where you want to go, not with eggs. There's no "cook for four minutes" that will get you good eggs every time you make them. Or, probably, any time you make them.
So fancy eggs start out as mostly conventional scrambled eggs. [No, I'm not giving out any of my cooking secrets! They were hard won, and you can go figure out your own secrets!] Then, when they're almost done, almost but not quite, you turn the heat off, add in the cream, and mix it in in the still hot skillet.

This did come from a recipe book, but the book is... well, it's not anymore clear than I just was about when and how to add in the cream. Why? Because you have to be standing there watching the eggs to know when. In fact, you have to work these eggs the entire time they're cooking if you want them to turn out right. There's none of this pouring the eggs into the skillet and doing something else for a few moments while the eggs cook on their own, then stirring them up a bit and going back to the other thing, repeat until eggs are done. [I know that's how you do it, because, when you make plain old scrambled eggs, that works just fine. Fine enough, at any rate.] But for these eggs, you have to work them the whole time and you have to pay attention to just how cooked they are so that you know when to add the cream.
Too soon and you have runny, soupy eggs that no one is going to want to eat.
Too late and the eggs are cooked through and the cream won't mix in so you have scrambled eggs sitting in a puddle of cream.
How do you know when you're at the correct moment to add the cream? Experience.

No two eggs are alike. It's similar to why I hate recipes that call for two cloves of garlic. What does that even mean? Garlic cloves can vary in size from the size of your pinky nail to the size of your thumb (or thereabouts, it's close enough, okay!). You have to be more specific. And who only wants just two cloves of garlic anyway? Wimps, that's who!
Look, what I'm saying is that you don't get the same volume of egg goop from six eggs from one time to the next, so the cooking time required is going to be different every single time. Sure, the difference is a matter of seconds, but when your eggs go from not-done-enough for cream to too-done for cream within about 10 or 12 seconds, you don't have any time to play around with. You have to be working the eggs and have the cream ready to go in. Also, the amount of cream has to vary somewhat, and you can only tell how much to put in by paying attention to the eggs.

It's expertise.

I know I started all of this by comparing this whole egg thing to writing, and it's a good metaphor. Most books are diner eggs, and that's probably all I need to say about that.
However, I think this is also a good metaphor for democracy. ["Oh, god, does everything have to be politics?" Well, yes, I think maybe it does. Right now, at any rate.] I think we in the United States took our democracy for granted, had that whole "it's only voting" mindset. We quit paying attention to it and let it get too done. Maybe burned. Maybe ruined. I don't know. I suppose we'll find out in 2020. If Trump (#fakepresident) wins again, legitimately or not, we'll know that democracy is over in the USA. The Republicans will be too firmly entrenched and civil rights will really begin to become a thing of the past. They're working hard at making that so right now.
Sorry, women, take your shoes off and get your asses back in the kitchen.
Sorry, black men... Yeah... Just, I'm sorry. I have nothing quippy to say to that.

If Trump (#fakepresident) loses... Well, it may also already be too late if he loses. I suppose we'll have to wait and see how that plays out. One thing is certain, he's not going to pass over the reins of power peacefully. At the very least, he's going to start screaming that the election was rigged, which is where things will get dicey. It's all going to depend on how his followers, both in and out of the government, respond to his throwing a tantrum. It may mean that it's time to throw that skillet of eggs in the trash and start again.
But I hope not.
Because it will mean that blood is being spilled.
And blood is already being spilled.
Or put in cages.
People being allowed to die, at any rate.

What all of this comes down to is that if you want to be good at something, at anything, you have to pay attention to it. You have to practice it. You have to do it. You can't leave your eggs to cook themselves, and you can't allow other people to take care of the vote you ought to be casting.
And putting words on a page in sentence format doesn't mean you're going to have a book worth reading.

"Nothing You Can't Handle": Why "christians" Think They're Better

I don't know if this will come as a surprise to any of you, but the Bible is full of things it doesn't actually say. Things like
there were three wisemen
cleanliness is next to godliness
god helps those who help themselves
abortion is a sin

Also, god will never give you a burden you can't bear.

"What?" you say, "That's not in the Bible? How can that be? People ("christians") say that all the time!"
Because of course they do.

Some of the examples I gave above have no Biblical basis whatsoever (actually, none of those things have any Biblical basis whatsoever), but this one does -- sort of; at least, it has a root cause for the thought -- so let's take a look at the actual verse the thought comes from.

I Corinthians 10:13 NIV
"No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it."

This verse is specifically dealing with sin and temptation. So, like, you're walking through a room and there's a fat piece of chocolate cake on a table, and you're tempted to eat it. This verse is saying that "god" won't allow you to be tempted in any way that goes beyond you're ability to resist it. Or, if it is a temptation beyond your ability to resist it, he'll offer some kind of escape hatch so that you can get away without sinning.

Which begs the question: why is the chocolate cake a sin? And, of course, it's not, but try convincing a "christian" of that. [Look, the cake is a metaphor (or, if you prefer, the cake is a lie).] At any rate, whether the cake is a sin is a topic for another conversation (and one I may have had on here? I can't remember, but I'm not going to go digging around looking for it, right now). The point, right now, is whether seeing the cake on  the table is a temptation beyond which you can bear and how, exactly, you can get away from it if it is. I don't remember ever seeing a special cake trap door appear in anyone's floor so that a tempted person could escape, and I'm pretty sure that would have made the news.

However, a "temptation," which happens in the moment, is quite a different thing from a "burden," which is ongoing. So the saying goes that any burden you have in your life, you only have because "god" knows you're strong enough to carry it. But let's take a closer look at that, too.

I think (and this is entirely my thought) that the verse cited above from I Corinthians may be being conflated with the verse from Matthew about taking up your cross to follow Jesus. You take up this burden, and "god" will give you the strength to carry it.
BUT
Not even Jesus was strong enough to carry his cross (his burden). Someone else had to step in and carry it for him.

And a lot of "christians" will say, "See, he couldn't carry it, so "god" provided someone to help him out because it was a burden beyond what he could bear." And that's all well and good except that it means that everyone who is burdened beyond their ability to carry the load should have someone there to take it from them. Right away. As soon as it's too heavy.

But that doesn't really ever happen, now, does it.
[In fact, the general response in modern evangelicalism is to decide that any person who becomes "burdened" in some way is, in fact, being punished by "god" and, therefore, no one should help that person. They need to fucking learn their lesson! Goddammit!]
There's definitely a failing somewhere in this whole concept, the most likely being that "god" doesn't hand out burdens or have anything to do with them or keeping them from getting too... burdenful. "He" couldn't give a shit about any burdens you may or may not have, either because "He" doesn't give a fuck about individual humans (anymore than we give a fuck about individual ants or bees) or because "He" doesn't actually exist (something I know I've talked about, but I'm also not going to go dig up that link).

The other main option is that "god" does monitor all of these burdens and has "provided" people ("christians"?) who will come along, as Simon did for Jesus, and take up your burdens for you so that you can make it BUT these "people" have free will and, so, are doing shit about helping other people, which is entirely true. Being someone who spent decades working in churches, I know exactly how "christians" feel about helping people in need. If it's someone white and in their congregation who suffers some kind of catastrophe, they are more than happy to step in and help but, if it's someone poor, especially if they are of some shade other than Caucasian, "god" suddenly only helps those who help themselves and they can all go fuck themselves. It's their own fault anyway and, if they didn't want to be poor or hungry or addicted or whatever, they would and could certainly do something about it.

Because, see, it's all about choice and, because "god" always provides a way out, that means that at some point that person made the cognitive choice to ignore that option and do something to put themselves into the situation they're in. You know, they chose the temptation. Or the burden is punishment. Or whatever. But whatever it is, it puts the "christian" into a position of superiority because, you know what? The "christian" doesn't have some undue punishment or temptation that they're giving into (other than the pride and arrogance they will never see) so that means, must mean, that the "christian" is favored by "god" while the suffering person is not. It gives them carte blanche to shrug their shoulders and go about their business.

Personally, I don't know how they get around the verse in Philippians that says, "...in humility value others above yourselves," but I guess I'm not the only one who has a "fuck Paul" attitude because, as much as "christians" hold Paul up as their idol, they never seem to get beyond his judginess in their dealings with other people. Paul also said to make the rich sit at the back of the church in the bad seats, but when's the last time you saw that happen? Oh, yeah, never.

So... If you ever wonder how or why it is all these "christians" in the United States don't seem to care at all about helping the poor and the destitute and the burdened, well, this why. They aren't compelled to because, obviously, "god" would take care of it if they deserved it. It's their burden to bear and, if they aren't able to handle it, it's their own choice.

Is that a great way to get out of helping people?

The New Civil War (ongoing) and Magic

A few (I use the term loosely) years ago, I wrote a series of posts about the Magic card game from Wizards of the Coast. At this point, I really haven't played any since sometime shortly after writing those posts, something which makes me sad on one level, but it is what it is. You have to pick and choose what you make time for in life, and Magic just isn't in the cards at the moment. But that's beside the point...

For those of you haven't realized it, yet, this post is going to be an analogy. Maybe an extended metaphor. I'm telling a story to make a point.

Before I go on, I should point out that one of the things I liked to do was make working, even winning, decks out of cards other people believed were worthless. In fact, my signature deck was built around

because one of the guys in my gaming group dismissed the card as a curiosity and nothing you could use to build a deck around. And everyone agreed with him. So, well, not only did I build a deck around it, I built a champion deck around it.

Back when I was into tournament play, I was responsible for having two different deck types banned from our local tournaments in north Louisiana. The first deck was organized around this card:

Chains was a card I was immediately drawn to (for reasons I'm not going to try to explain, since it would take more time than it's worth to get the point across to people who don't understand the game) when the Legends expansion came out, though it was mostly deemed a useless card by everyone else. Once I was able to gather the cards I needed for the deck (actually a difficult process where the Legends expansion was concerned), I put it together and took it to a tournament.

Without going into detail, each opponent I played, once I got the combination of cards out that I needed, cried foul. The tournament judge had to come over each time and verify that what I was doing was not, in fact, cheating and that the cards were operating as designed. Each opponent I played got all pissy about losing to the deck I was playing and, basically, accused me of not playing fair. Basically, because I had put together a card combination that no one else had thought of and created a deck no one had a counter to, I had done something that wasn't fair. One player quit in the middle of our match and stomped out of the store vowing never to come back because the judge wouldn't side with him against my deck, and the final player I was to play, the match for the tournament win, forfeited without playing a single game. He had watched my last couple of matches, knew he couldn't win, and didn't want to play against the deck I had.

Of course, my deck was banned after that from future tournament play and, several weeks later, WotC restricted the use of Chains because it was too powerful. The card everyone thought was useless. And the dude who stormed out? He was back the next week and expressed to me his admiration for the deck. No one, however, ever suggested that my win be declared illegitimate due to the immediate banning of my deck or the later restriction of the card.

The other deck I had banned was a deck built around creatures called thallids. Again, I'm not going to get into the mechanics of the deck, but let's just say it was a slow build deck and the issue around it was that it caused long games. When you're trying to keep a tournament to a reasonable length of time, decks that cause long games are not looked upon favorably. And, yes, I built the deck because it was general consensus that you couldn't win a tournament with thallids.

One thing of interest about that tournament:
The guy I played the championship against also had a slow build deck, so our championship match took a long time to play. He had, however, gotten a lucky break in the second game and won a quick victory so that we were tied one to one going into the third game. My deck was such that, though, if you hadn't beaten me by turn four or five, there was no way you could, so we played on and on until I could get to a point where I could wipe him out. The spectators started getting antsy because the game was taking so long and started urging one of us to forfeit. The other guy refused and, being the rules lawyer that he was, everyone knew there was no point in trying to convince him to surrender even though it was painfully obvious that he was going to lose. Eventually. So everyone started trying to convince me to quit and let him win, the logic being that since everyone knew I was going to win, I could forfeit and claim, "I was going to win, anyway."

Yeah, that didn't do it for me, so we played until the bitter end, and my deck was banned from future tournaments. Don't worry; it would have been banned even if I had forfeited.

This is the part where I get to the point:
No one that I beat came back later protesting that their losses had been unfair because my decks ended up being banned. No one came back saying that the tournament outcomes should be re-decided because of any kind of unfair advantage that I'd had.

But, see, white supremacists have lost two wars, two very major wars, and here they are whining about how unfair it's all been that they're not being allowed to "win." They're like little cry baby spoil sports who can't take their losses and realize that no one else wants their white supremacist bullshit.

Or, to flip the analogy (because I can do that sort of thing), I didn't whine about how my decks were banned and keep bringing them to tournament after tournament demanding to be allowed to play with them. No, I went home and came up with new deck ideas.

A good example of how pissy and whiny they are happened this weekend (as I write this) in San Francisco. After being denied all of their tools of violence and ways to broadcast their violence, the white supremacist ninnies called their event off all together. No one barred them from holding their "rally," but when told they couldn't bring their guns and other weapons and paraphernalia, they called the whole thing off (more than once), and played the "Fine! I'll just go home, then, and never come back!" card. [Many of them have said that they want attempt to come back to San Francisco (like it's some kind of threat?).] And everyone shrugged and said, "Okay, go." But the fact that they chose to not hold their rally shows what their true intent was all along: to incite violence. Being barred from that, they had nothing to say.

But they're not going to come back next week and say, "You know, that was well played. We lost fair and square." No, they're going to whine about it and talk about how they were treated unfairly and barred from holding their rally, and their #fakepresident Trump is going to support them in their whining. It seems even Magic players are more mature, much more mature, than white supremacists.

The Children Will Pay

You can think of the photo as a metaphor.

So far, in talking about Trump I have focused on the overt racism (and sexism!) his campaign and presidency represent. This is like a piece of cheese covered in mold, and I mean covered. Something that looks like a chunk of green and white fuzz rather, and you only know that there was cheese there because of the packaging. It's disgusting and vile and you probably don't want to smell it, much less take a bite of it. However, it's possible that you could be tempted to want to try to cut the mold off to get down to the good cheese, and, based on the number of people who voted for Trump, a lot of you out there think the overt racism (and sexism!) is just some surface thing that can be cut away.

What I'm saying is that the surface mold was more than reason enough to throw away that (previously) orange piece of cheese. But, you know, since we didn't do that, let's look at what's under that horrible growth of mold.

Actually, wait a minute, let's stop and look at that mold again for just a moment:

Because it's not us, the adults, who will pay for the fungal racist bloom growing in America right now. It will be our children and our children's children. They will be the ones who will have to spend decades repairing the damage to race relations after a Trump presidency.

But that, at least, will be repairable. As bad as that could be, it will be repairable.

There are other things that are not repairable that we may be consigning our children and their children and their children to live with forever. And let's just skip the potential for nuclear war that's wrapped up in Trump's tiny little tyrannosaurus hands (along with his tiny little dinosaur brain).

As bad as everything else will be with Trump as President (and you're living with your head up your ass if you don't believe it will be bad) -- it's going to be a disaster, worst deal ever -- the absolute worst thing is going to be what Trump does to the environment.

And I get that a lot of you out there don't believe the science, don't believe the world isn't flat, but what the data shows is beyond scary. 2016 is the hottest year on record in something like 130 years of record keeping, and that's following nine other hottest years on record in the last 15 or 20 years. The science says we're at a tipping point, and Trump and his new buddy Scott Pruitt are going to do everything they can to push us over the edge. Or, to put it more directly, they are going to do everything they can to keep the people holding us back from a whole Earth climate disaster from being able to do that anymore.

This is what is reprehensible:
Trump, and others like him, have no vision and no long term plan. Their only concern is how much money they can make NOW, and the way to do that is to rape the Earth. Destroying the environment for profit has been the way of man for a long time, now, but we are at the end of what we can destroy and still retain the world as it is. Men like Trump and Pruitt DO NOT CARE. They don't care if what they leave behind is a desiccated husk as long as they get what they want.

And, sure, maybe Trump really just doesn't believe in climate change; maybe, he really does believe it's a Chinese hoax, but that just makes him a special kind of stupid, and we shouldn't have someone like that running the country.

Honestly, I don't care what you think about anything else about Trump: If you can't see and understand this threat that Trump represents then you, also, only care about your own immediate self-gratification without regard for the damage that you're doing (listening to Trump voters, I think this represents the vast majority of them) or you, also, are a dumbass who doesn't believe in science and should go back to living in a cave and hunting your food with a pointy stick. Or you could be some combination of the two.

Seriously, there are SO MANY individual reasons that should have been enough for people to avoid Trump like the moldy cheeseball that he is, but this, what he will allow to be done to the environment, is the greatest. This is the one that we won't be able to come back from. Trump voters, you've all just driven us off the edge of a cliff. I hope you're satisfied with yourselves.

Clone Wars -- "Carnage of Krell" (Ep. 4.10)

-- Our actions define our legacy.

[Remember, you can sign up to join the Clone Wars Project at any time by clicking this link.]

We've come to the end of the Krell arc but not the end of the story as it pertains to Krell...

And I don't really know what to say about it that won't give all of this one away.
Fives continues to be one of my favorite clones.
I also like Rex a lot.
Krell is still an asshole...?

Wait, wait, I've got it!
(Yes, Krell is still an asshole.)

How many clones does it take to get to the center of a Jedi? A one, a two, a...
Oh, no, wait, that doesn't really work, does it? Tootsie pops don't generally fight back. Or wield double-bladed lightsabers.

Did I give too much away? I hope not.
This is a really solid story arc that highlights some of the differences in the individual clones. The plight of Dogma, one of the recurring clones in the series (his name should tell you everything you need to know about him), is both sad and hopeful. And a metaphor. A metaphor which is politically appropriate if you painted Krell a slight orange color and put a wispy wig on his head. Dogma's world is destroyed when his eyes are opened and he sees the truth.

I might, now, be giving too much away.

Okay, look, I'm going to quit talking about the episode. You should just go watch the arc, mostly so that you can see this episode. There will be repercussions (I just can't remember when those happen or what they are (which is good! because I'm looking forward to it, now)).
So, now, instead of listening to me, watch this, then go watch the Krell arc.

Pantsing, Plotting, and the Grocery List

I hate the "grocery list." I do. I hate it. You want to know why? Fine, I'll tell you why. Because I didn't used to need one, and I hate the fact that I need one now. Seriously, ten years ago, I could walk  into the grocery store with no list despite needing 30 different things, and I'd walk out with every single thing on my not-list. I never got home and had to deal with "CRAP! I forgot the <one thing I went to get in the first place>!" These days, if I go to the store needing three things, I might come home with two of them. Yes, I said "might."

It's all very distressing. Mostly, it's distressing for my ego. I've been in list training now for probably five years or so. 'Cause, see, I hate the idea of needing the list, so I try to brush off the need, "No, I don't need no steenking list!" But, yet, coming home with only 2/3 of what you went in to get just doesn't work very well, and it causes repeated trips to the store to get the things I forgot, and I hate that even more. Especially if it's something I need right then, which does happen.

Granted, one of the reasons I forget things is my kids, specifically, my daughter. She likes to go to the store with me, and we never make it even 10' into the store before she's asking for things, and, pretty soon, the flood of items she's inserting into my mental landscape has completely blotted out the actual mental list that was there. Which is why I need a paper list. Besides, she likes the paper list. She gets to hold it, and she likes to go get things while I'm, say, picking through the apples trying to find ones that aren't bruised.

Which brings me to pantsing. We were at the store the other day without a list, my wife, my daughter, and I. Theoretically, since my wife was with me, we should have had a list, especially since she's the one that makes lists in our house and is in charge of my list training. Seriously, she loves lists. But we didn't have a list, and there was a reason for that that I just can't remember right now. See, I should have written it down (except I didn't know I'd want that particular piece of information again). Anyway, we were walking through the store tossing back and forth the things we needed to get and going back and forth in store as we remembered things that we'd already passed and all of that, and it occurred to me how like pantsing it is to go to the store without a list. [For any of you non-writers that may be reading this, "pantsing" is not what you might be thinking and has nothing to do with high school hazing. Pantsing is short for "by the seat of your pants" or, in other words, not having a plan. Writing without a plan (plot), specifically. To look at from an Indiana Jones perspective: "I don't know. I'm making it up as I go."]

Without the list, the following things happen:
1. I spend a lot of time walking back-and-forth through the store trying to get things as I remember them rather than starting at one side of the store and ending at the other. In other words, it takes a lot longer because it wastes a lot of time. [To put this in writing terms, it's like having to do a lot of revising as you go back and put things in that you forgot. Like forgetting to have one character tell some other character some vital piece of information that he wouldn't know otherwise.]
2. I still forget things. This is especially true of items I only need every few weeks. Like laundry detergent. I hate when laundry detergent is one of the things I need on a given trip, because, if that's not written down, I will forget it. That means an immediate trip back to the store or putting off the laundry, and, let me just say, you can only put off doing the laundry so many times. Not having laundry detergent is not an excuse when  other people can smell you. [In writing terms, this are major revisions. Having to go back into the draft over and over to fix the holes you left.]
3. I buy things I don't really need to be buying (this is especially problematic when my daughter is with me). If I have a list, I go directly to the things I need, finishing my trip quickly and efficiently. When I don't, I wander through the store and pick up extra things "just in case." "Oooh! Cheese ball! Things I wouldn't see if I wasn't wandering around trying to remember what I was supposed to be getting. [This is like writing things in that don't really serve your story just because you like them. Sometimes, these things can be entertaining side bits (like "Oooh! Cheese ball!"), but, often, these are just things that bloat the story (like those Oreos you know you should have just walked on past and are now sitting in the cupboard causing all sorts of guilt) and would be better left out. Yes, I'm calling your story fat.]
4. I let my daughter talk me into buying things that no one else in the family wants to eat and, really, we don't want her to eat. Like the jar of nutella sitting in the cupboard that no else likes, and we won't let her eat any of it more than once a month or so because it has so much sugar in it (actually, that wasn't a whim purchase, but it serves to illustrate the point, because that stuff is in our cupboard only because of my daughter). [This is like applying every piece of advice you hear to your manuscript, whether it's coming from CPs or agents or whomever. I don't have definitive data for this, but it seems to me that pantsers have a much more difficult time with not responding to every suggestion about their manuscripts that come along. (Plotters tend to be more focused and more easily discard bad advice.)]

I'm sure you've figured out that the list is a metaphor for plotting. Just to be clear.

Having said all of that, I'm not saying that being a pantser is a bad thing. It's just a bad thing for me. If I don't have a plan, if I don't, at least, have notes, I don't remember it. So I make story notes. Right now, I have notes for about half a dozen different stories or books for the future that I add to when I have ideas. It's just... necessary for me. If I'd started all of this before I had kids to distract me, maybe it wouldn't matter, but it does, so I have to plan out what I'm doing just so that I remember what I'm doing.

Which is not to say that I'm extreme or anything. I don't storyboard everything or anything like that. Heck, I don't even make actual outlines (which is ironic, because I was trying to teach my daughter the importance of outlining, recently, because she was working on an essay for school, and she kept mixing up her main points with her evidence). But I do need a list. There are probably a lot of you out there that don't need lists, yet, but there's one thing I can tell you for sure: even if you don't need it, it never hurts to have one. Just in case.

Zombies: A Cultural Metaphor

Society has changed in the last four decades. This is not to say that society isn't always changing, but the change that has occurred recently (recent being a relative term) is one that we've never seen before. Technological progress, throughout the ages, has always been seen as a good thing. I don't mean scientific discovery, which has not always been viewed positively, but the actual trinkets of technology that scientific progress has made possible. Mankind has always had an innate sense that he could do no wrong. That belief has dissipated like morning mist.

Four decades ago, a zombie was still just a zombie. A re-animated corpse. Slow. Stupid. No will of its own. It was something created by man that man controlled. The only exception to this rule was Frankenstein's monster, but the Frankenstein monster became a special case and has never really been viewed as a zombie. Even though zombies could be controlled, they were still dead things. Just animated. They had no more need of sustenance than does a marionette. They did not hunger. They did not want. They only obeyed.

That all began to change in 1968 with the release of Night of the Living Dead. For the first time, the dead, en masse, rose up against the living to devour them. It was the first use of zombies to symbolize that man might, just possibly, be playing around with forces he didn't understand.

The 80s arrived and, with it, a culture of teenagers that didn't believe they would live to be adults. Post-apocalyptic literature/entertainment hit its stride. Not that it hadn't existed, but, prior to the 80s, (and I am now going to lump all of this together into the dystopian category) dystopians had really been isolated events.
And I mean it when I say we didn't believe that we would make it through high school without nuclear holocaust being thrust upon us. In middle school, for a Christmas door decorating contest, my homeroom did a whole Nuclear Winter theme. We even re-wrote several popular Christmas songs with lyrics like, "I'm dreaming of a nuclear winter."

However, the cold war ended, and we don't really believe an actual nuclear holocaust will happen anymore. No, now, we believe man will destroy the Earth in much more subtle ways. Like a zombie apocalypse. Zombies have become the representation of our fear that mankind will, ultimately, be unable to control the technology that he plays with. Zombies have evolved. They are no longer re-animated corpses. They're fast. They're smart. They're hungry. They want to destroy us. Destroy life. They're smart, but they are unthinking. Their intelligence is applied only to achieving their goal. Devouring us Destroying life. Hmm... somewhat like the single-minded way in which corporations pursue financial success.

In short, zombies have become a cultural metaphor for all the ways in which technology will destroy us.

However, that's only  the metaphor in its simplest form. The obvious one. The one that has to do with our nightmares over what secret things governments and corporations are doing in the dark. It lives off of our fears that we'll wake up, shivering and drenched in sweat, and find out that society has collapsed. No rules. Only chaos.

The deeper part of that fear extends down to where we believe that technology is actually turning each of us into zombies. Especially the generation that's growing up around us. The generation of technological zombies. You know it's true. People refuse to be detached from their technology. People that grew up without it and know it's possible to leave home without a phone and still survive refuse to go without, so how do we show the (little) people who have never known life without cells that it's possible to go without? It's with us everywhere. And it's scary. But, still, we embrace it. We can't help it.

Despite the data that the use of cellular devices, in whatever capacity, while driving is more dangerous than driving while intoxicated, we choose to believe that we can handle it, and we don't have the excuse of impaired judgement that intoxication brings. Despite the new warnings by WHO (the World Health Organization, not the Doctor. Or the band.) that cellular devices bring a greater risk of brain cancer, especially in children and adolescents, we will go on using our bits and pieces of technology and deal with any consequences later. Despite the continued statements of desire to connect with people in actual face-to-face contact, we will, more and more often, forsake physicalness in favor of a virtual reality that we can "control."

We are becoming the zombies that we fear. Soulless creatures walking through life but only seeing things through the tiny input devices we hold in our hands. And just wait till they can actually put that stuff right inside our skulls. Is it any wonder that we have become so incredibly fascinated with zombies? After all, vampires could be defeated. How do we defeat ourselves?