Effing Effingham

This past weekend I drove halfway across the country and back again over the course of about four days. I learned that America is a pretty weird place.

As demonstrated by a mildly retarded man from Texas winning two Presidential elections, most of America is a pretty religious place. Some people demonstrate their religion by helping poor people and stuff like that, things Jesus would have done. Others, however, like the residents of Effingham, Illinois, decided to build the biggest cross in the world. So yeah, there’s a 198 foot tall metal cross along I-70. Truckers are, of course, welcome.

This wasn’t the only cross I saw though, as it was pretty common to see three crosses on hilltops. So here’s what I’m thinking. When Christianity first started, it was really popular with women and slaves, because in Rome their lives sucked, and that whole Heaven thing seemed pretty sweet. This same thing helps explain why it took so long for people like the Vikings to convert: their afterlife is much better than Heaven, they just drink and fight all day, every day, so there’s really no reason to convert. I think that what I’m basically getting at here is that most of the center of this country, like Effingham, really sucks, and the people who live there are already looking ahead. Clinging to their religion (and guns).

Crosses were only the second strangest thing that I saw along the road. First place goes to a series of billboards stretching across Ohio and Indiana, advertising RVs and homes. The name of the RV company, as you may recall if you’ve also been forced to pass through what I’m sure Sarah Palin would describe as the pro-America America, is Tom Raper RVs. How is that someone’s name? If your last name is Raper, just change it.

One of the coolest parts about driving for 14 straight hours is learning all sorts of place names. Driving from Philadelphia to St. Louis is a pretty international experience; I passed London, Lisbon, Brazil, Troy, and Rome. I guess that it’s pretty tough to come up with original place names for an entire country, as demonstrated by Nameless Creek and Arnold City.

Ok, but that’s enough about that journey, I have more important things to talk about. First, science. I’ve made no secret of my desire to see scientists just start doing really cool things, and do them well. I don’t necessarily care what it is, cloning, flying cars, robots, anything like that, I just want to see cool things. Dick knows of this, and the scorn I’ve been heaping on scientists for their failure to keep me properly amused, and sent me this article to show that they’re doing stuff. I’m not impressed. Yeah, it’s cool that they were able to save some guy’s hand. But they used leaches. Come on, doctors have been using leaches for centuries. I’m surprised that they didn’t sacrifice a bull too. And anyway, the guy still doesn’t have feeling in his hand yet. I am not impressed with these scientists.

At least astronomers are still making moves. As this article says, some guys are speculating that there could be tons of earth-like planets scattered throughout our galaxy. That would be pretty cool. If there are alien lifeforms out there, these guys were thinking that most of them would be the kind of things that were on earth hundreds of millions of years ago, not cool things like people or wookies or even dinosaurs, but single cell organisms, and things like that. Which makes me think, how cool would it be if by the time these things get to where we are, evolutionarily speaking, we’ve mastered interstellar travel? We could be the conquering aliens that plucky planet bound movie stars would have to fight off. There could even be an alien President Whitmore. He would give such a good speech, I bet. Europeans are taking the first step here, running an isolation experiment to see if people could handle a trip to Mars. Getting to Mars and back would take over 500 days, so they want to make sure that people could deal with that. Fuck it, I'm sure I could do it. They wouldn't even need to pay me. Just put me in some spaceship on my way to Mars, 18 months in space wouldn't bother me; I don't think anything would. It would be so cool.

So John McCain is on twitter now (here's the story about it, there's probably a link to his twitter page too, but I felt no need to go look at it.) I’m not excited. First of all, fuck twitter. It’s completely unnecessary, who feels the need to put out vapid updates several times a day. Their character limit is going to finish what AIM and texting have started; I cant w8 2 c the first book tat looks liek this. Fuck. Anyway, McCain. What’s his deal? He clearly can’t be considering another Presidential run in 2012; he got his ass kicked this year, he’s going to be even older then, and if he gets in her way, Sarah Palin may shoot him from her helicopter. So why is he trying to stay in the spotlight so much? Doesn’t seem real mavericky.

I just saw a commercial for some show that the Golf Chanel is doing, The Haney Project, where the world’s best swing coach is going to try to fix Charles Barkley’s swing. The commercial said that the show would be uncensored, and I guess to underscore this point they had Barkley saying “shit” after a swing. But they bleeped it.

So it’s looking conceivable that Nadya Suleman won’t be able to take her octuplets home with her. It would suck if the kids have to be put into foster care, but that’s gotta be best for them in the long run. She’s out of her mind crazy, and doesn’t need to spread that crazy around. I’m still really frightened by her. When she has another four kids next year, and she will, someone will hopefully step in then and steal her uterus or something. She’s just terrifying.

I think that’s pretty much it for now. Happy Marty Brodeur Day everyone.

We're gonna have to work on our communication

The RAF just locked up the 2009 award for ballsiest decision ever, and it’s only January. But seriously, what could possibly beat this? For the link-opposed, the story says that dating back to the 1980s RAF pilots have on several occasions have been given orders to shoot down UFOs. While you pick your jaw up, I’ll repeat that. RAF pilots have tried to shoot down UFOs.

So far, the RAF has been unsuccessful in its attempts. However, recent weapons developments have given some guy named Mr. Pope, who spent 21 years in the Ministry of Defense, hope that eventually humans will be able to blow those aliens sons of bitches out of the sky.

While the public stance of the MoD is that UFOs don’t pose any danger to the public, that’s obviously garbage. They’re aliens! They’re probably trying to kill us and steal our planet. Plus, if we shoot one down we can probably steal all the alien technology. I would go to outerspace in a rebuilt UFO, doesn’t matter to me. Anyway, in closing, I support the RAF’s efforts to shoot down UFOs; we should show them that we won’t go down easily before we fall into a situation like this:

A plea on behalf of humanity

Ok, so, zombies. I would be lying if I said that I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about a zombie attack. I have a plan for what to do and where to go if an outbreak happens. I’m looking forward to destroying staircases to thwart the undead. I even have a competition going with Dick to see who can kill more zombies. But there is one aspect I had never fully considered.

What if the zombies win? What if the outbreak happens too quickly, and spreads uncontrollably, and humanity can’t come back from it. In World War Z it gets close to that, but people are able to survive, with winter in the Rockies protecting them from zombies. Eventually, humans are able to push back across the continent, killing all the zombies in a well-coordinated, methodical approach.

But let’s say that nothing saves humans, and zombies bring about our extinction. The zombie race would then die off too, as zombies decompose and go unreplaced. The world would essentially be preserved, almost like a Pompeii without the ashes, as zombies have neither need nor desire for human contraptions.

Imagine if the world remains essentially untouched for centuries; sure, some things would break down, but so much of what we created isn’t biodegradable that the world would still essentially be a giant diorama of human life. So, being preserved in that state, what if an alien race lands on earth.

Seriously, what would alien historians think when they came to earth? Presumably, because in my mind aliens are all-powerful, they would be able to figure out what happened to all the people. But what would they think when they started studying human culture. Like, imagine if these aliens found the DVDs (and they would have the technology to play them, just go with this, please) for movies like 28 Weeks Later and Zombies vs. Vampires. They would have to think humans were the dumbest creatures ever. Like, we saw all this coming, we knew how to stop it, and still the zombies killed us all. Aliens would just laugh at us.

Humanity deserves better than that. So I’m pleading with everyone that reads this, both of you, prepare for a zombie uprising, not only so you survive, but so that aliens don’t think we’re really stupid. Thank you.