Intestines

The other day I was sitting in one of my lectures when I heard a strange noise. It was the girl sitting next to me - her stomach was rumbling. And then it hit me. I began to look around the room in a sort of panic at the realization I had just made. I looked at the people around me, and suddenly I was looking into them.

They all have intestines.

I tried to shake the thought and pay attention to the lesson. The teacher was saying something about Gestalt Psychology and visual principles.

That guy has intestines.

At that moment the idea of education, spoken language and humanity itself seemed pretty ridiculous to me. Sure, we have pretty communication methods and clothes and inventions, but there's nothing special about us on the inside.

My dog has intestines.

Fortunately, my existential moment passed quickly and I remembered that I have a soul and a capacity to love. But overall, I usually enjoy it when I have experiences like this.

DISCLAIMER:

I started writing this blog post on August 31, 2008 and just finished it today - February 11, 2009. This is not because I devoted a lot of effort into this - it's because I got bored of blogging and felt like my efforts were pretty insignificant in the whole scheme of things.

But yesterday, my friend Jase Rohde came up to me and told me how much he enjoyed my blog, and not only did he enjoy it - but he subscribed to it! This is big news.




Jase, seeing as you may be the only person who is reading this - I dedicate this blog post to you.

I encourage you to read it multiple times throughout the course of the day so that I can accumulate a couple more cents of revenue from my ad on the right side of the page. Since August, I have made $3.72 off of that thing. When it reaches $100.00, I will get a check in the mail!

Fun with Steve's computer

I think this comic pretty much sums up my childhood:


I made this on my roommate Steve's computer. He has a MacBook Pro which I use a lot without his permission. One night Peter Seifert, Jordan Stilley and I were sitting around, and I was thoroughly enjoying the Photo Booth program, giggling like an idiot as I filled up Steve-O's hard drive with photos of my distorted face.

"I REALLY like this computer...I wish it was mine," I say, shaking my head in disbelief at how awesome it is that I can make comic books of myself in like 5 seconds.

Then Jordan gives me this inquisitive look, pauses for a second, then says, "Isn't that pretty much the exact definition of coveting?"

"OOOOOH BURN!" Peter exclaims.

Touche, Jordan Stilley...

We shared a pretty lengthy laugh immediately after that, but I really appreciate that he said something. It wasn't a stern rebuke, but it was accountability nonetheless. So now I will try to do a better job of lovingly correcting my friends, and I hope that you all will do the same for me.

And in the meantime, I will also try not to be jealous of Steve's stuff. Although it's hard when his computer has the power to create something like this:

Thoughts on zombies

(Peter and I)

One thing you should know about Peter Seifert is that he knows more about zombies than you do. He said he has been studying a lot of literature ("The Zombie Survival Guide" - Max Brooks) and has watched many documentaries ("Night of the Living Dead," "Shaun of the Dead"). Peter is convinced that a zombie infestation would be the best epidemic that could possibly happen.

I don't doubt his expertise on the subject, but I don't really agree with him about zombies being the best epidemic. Personally, I would prefer a diarrhea epidemic to a zombie epidemic. But I can see where Peter's coming from - in essence, a zombie should be a very easy thing to avoid. It is sluggish, rotting and (according to Peter) incapable of learning new information. But somehow, in every zombie movie I've seen they always find a way to catch people like you and me and rip us apart.

Peter refutes this argument by saying that the only way a zombie could really catch you is if you let one sneak up from behind and take you by surprise. He says a real zombie is incredibly stupid and will do things like continually walk into a closed door because it doesn't know how to turn the door knob.

I asked Peter what he would do if he were walking down Welch Avenue and he saw a zombie walking toward him. He said the first thing he would do is go to Pizza Pit.

"I would go in there and grab the pizza cutter, because they have huge blades and I would run outside and slice it's head off. And then I'd have to scout to see if any one got bit by that zombie."


Peter said it takes 48 hours for someone to turn into a zombie after being infected, to which my roommate, Jesse, replies, "I contracted the zombie once. Nothing a little codine can't fix."

This concept of "turning" interests me. Peter says you can get infected by getting bit, scratched or by getting zombie blood in your mouth (which is why you need to be careful not to pull a Michael Jordan while decapitating a zombie with a pizza cutter).



I asked Peter if he would kill himself if he got infected. Peter laughed.
"I would want to infect as many people as possible!" Peter said.

At this point in the conversation, I try my best to look at the zombie scenario from a Christian perspective. "What do you think about sharing the gospel with zombies?"

"There's no point - they're already dead," Peter said. "But I wonder if it was like a Christian zombie, instead of terrorizing people, they would be doing good deeds for people, like helping old ladies across the street...Maybe they can resist eating the flesh of humans and just eat animal flesh...but real zombies don't like the flesh of animals so I don't see how they could resist that temptation."

I was about to bust out 1 Corinthians 10:13, but somehow it didn't seem like the temptation to eat the flesh of a living human being could in any way qualify as "common to man."

"What is the most effective weapon against a zombie?" I asked.

My roommate Steve lit up and blurted, "Garlic. Crap, wait-"

"I would prefer a sniper rifle," Peter said. "I could just sit on top of a building and shoot their heads off." He said the weapon choice depends on your environment and what you have available. After I got out of the shower this morning, I decided that the best weapon in my bathroom is the metal towel rack, assuming I can rip it off the wall in the heat of the moment.

Peter said he's thought about dressing up as a zombie and roaming the town, but he's afraid that somebody might blow his head off with a shotgun. "If I saw somebody dressed up as a zombie, I'd kill them," Peter said. "And I'd be completely within my rights - I'd say, 'I thought it was a zombie.' That'd stand up in court."

Probably the most interesting thing I learned from Peter was about the digestive behaviors of zombies. They don't poop. Apparently zombies just eat until they explode - this is what constitutes a "natural" death for a zombie.

Except zombies.