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The following is a post submitted by guest contributor James Remington.
Thanksgiving is a time when relatives come together to argue while eating good food, usually enough good food to keep them exercising regularly until Christmas, when they will eat too much good food again. I used to think this was the only reason for having Thanksgiving; my teachers may have told me some other reasons, but I was probably asleep (I’m a night owl - you know, sleep during school then play Halo all night).
Anyways, until I was about 9 years old this is what I thought, although now that I think about it, I do vaguely remember seeing lots of potbellies lining the couches in front of a TV while I rolled around in pain wishing I hadn’t eaten so much pumpkin pie. As I was saying, when I was nine my stomach finally caught up with my mouth, making me completely unable to fill it. That is when I noticed something new about Thanksgiving, namely, the football game.
Since that fateful day my eyes have been glued to the screen every Thanksgiving afternoon. Not that I enjoy football, but it is a tradition and who am I to break tradition? Besides, it's the only time I can drink six beers in three hours without getting arrested for under-age drinking.
All these fond memories were quickly shaken out of place the other day when I was looking at my sister’s pictures. Somehow, I had stumbled into a folder labeled “Thanksgiving_pics.” As I looked through the pictures moving from one year to the next, I noticed something almost too horrible to speak of: a watermelon had been growing in my gut, getting larger and larger every year. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? Why didn’t my doctor ever tell me about this problem? Surely he had seen this in some of his x-rays? Should I have listened to my mother's warnings about not eating the seeds, after all?
As these questions flooded my mind, I felt a cold, icy hand creep up my neck, slowly gripping me, making it harder and harder to breathe.
“What do you think you're doing, looking through my private pictures?”
Man, I hate sisters. They always seem to break in on the most solemn moments of thought and ruin it all. Then it happened. “What happened?” you ask? Well, I really don’t know, but suddenly I was flying through the air towards the antique piano on the other side of the room. Did I mention that my sister is both a body builder and a karate black belt? I hate that kind of sister even more, especially when I got the short genes and she got the tall ones. All I remember about my subsequent touchdown is that for two minutes all I could hear was very loud ringing, almost as though my head was inside a piano, which it was, then I took my hand off the pedal. What a relief!
The doctors say I only have minor brain damage, but they must be wrong because I have an inexplicable magnetic pull that seems to force me to exercise, a sensation that is very new to me.
Oh, and as for Thanksgiving, from now on, no more watching football games and drinking beer. Instead, I'll watch golf while riding my exercise bike and eating tofu pumpkin pie.
Fitness clubs are scary places. They're advertised as the place to go to lose weight or "get in shape," but the truth is that everyone at a gym is already in shape and ready to look askance at those who dare arrive with an unhealthy body. Every time I step foot in one of those places, I feel intimidated by the lean, mean, muscle machine men, not to mention the women doing reps with 20-lb barbells.
I can hear them mentally sizing me up: "Look at that dweeb; I bet he can't even walk a mile without getting out of breath and I could snap him in two in one try. What's a guy like that doing here?"
Between the men who look down on me for my excess insulation and puny muscles and the women with whom I know I don't have a dream of ever having a chance, I feel that gyms are a hostile environment for people like me. Unfortunately, people like me also need to exercise in order to become like people like them. Also, I've heard that being physically fit helps to attract the opposite sex, something I need a lot of help with.
This in mind, I wracked my brain trying to think of a solution. A few weeks ago, I found one. "Aha!" my brain said, "I will join Curves; I can burn 500 calories in 30 minutes and the women there aren't terribly fit. Plus, they have low self-esteem, evidenced by the fact that they go to a place that caters to women, enabling them to get fit without damaging their image with men who go to real gyms."
I knew this would work great. I could become a lean, mean, muscle machine man while picking up women at the same time. The next day, I happily drove to the local Curves, which was only about a block away. I parked my car and walked through the open door.
Am imposing looking woman who might have had an elephant for an uncle sat at a desk and eyed me warily. "What are you doing here, young man?" she asked in a none-too-gentle tone, giving me the impression that she didn't want my business. I considered backing away and coming up with a plan "B," but I had thought too long to give up so easily. I opened my mouth to begin to speak.
To be continued...
If you can survive a zombie apocalypse, you can survive anything.
It's time for another scientific fact about zombies.
MYTH: Zombies only come out at night.
Many people believe that zombies are sensitive to light. This is a myth propagated by many mainstream zombie movies, most famously I am Legend, which had a scene involving a pack of zombie dogs waiting for the last ray of sun to go down so they could charge.
Common example: "I'll travel by day and hide by night."
Better example: "I'll hole up in my house by night. By day, I'll go out for supplies and look for survivors."
Best example: "I'll set up big flood lights all around my house which run off a generator on top of my house which will recharge using solar power."
FACT: Zombies are only mildly sensitive to UV light.
Zombies don't like being hit by ultraviolet light; their skin is much more sensitive than human skin and burns easily. Most zombies don't have the brains (lame pun intended) or faculties to apply sun lotion, so, for the first few weeks of the plague, they'll show a strong preference for staying indoors during the day, often huddling together in standing-room only conditions. When some places get too crowded, zombies will turn on each other and toss the remains out into the sun. Many survivors will see this and believe that the day is safe from zombies. Not so.
After several weeks, the zombies will no longer be able to find easy food. Now they will be forced to hunt down survivors, a time-consuming and tedious task. Because zombies don't have to sleep, they can devote their entire energy to this, and because they will be driven by desperate hunger, they won't mind a little sun burn. It's not like it'll ruin their complexion or anything.
Note also that there are some forms of zombies which are not sensitive to any kind of light. The best example:
Fire zombies are very rare but extremely dangerous. Because at least some part of their body is perpetually aflame, they tend to be easily identifiable. They can breathe fire from their mouths or ignite projectiles (such as telephone poles, front doors, Gigli DVDs, or other zombies) and hurl them great distances. Fire zombies tend to travel during the day to reduce their visibility and like their meat medium rare.
Survivors will have to be on their guard at all times, around the clock.
Of course, it is true that if you surround your hiding place with bright lights, you can buy yourself some time. Zombies won't go after you until they really mean it. If you want to set up a light wall, there are several considerations to make:
First, it must be UV light. Surrounding your house with normal flood lights won't do you a bit of good. You'd do better to crawl into a tanning bed. UV lamps are pretty expensive - a little 70 watt stand won't cost you less than 150 cheese. You'll need several dozen of them to surround your house densely enough to do some damage, and that means thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the cost of the solar panels. There are a few economical solutions. You could get everyone in your block to pitch in and ring the entire area. That means less surface area to cover, which means fewer lamps to buy. Alternatively, you could wait for the plague to break out and then loot your local hardware store. This method is not recommended because it's untimely, risky, and possibly immoral.
Your best bet is get a coalition of like-minded survivors and ring an area with lamps. Your neighbors will laugh at you and call you paranoid. Well, we'll see who's laughing when the zombies are feasting on neighbors-du-jour! Of course, a UV lamp ring is hardly the only condition of a zombie survival hideout. What are the others? Come back next Monday.
Comment with your personal zombie survival plan for a free expert analysis.
