Alan’s Blog of Monkey Bloginess

I like to have fun here at my Blog of Monkey Bloginess, but I want to put the cardigan sweater on and have a serious chat with you for a moment. It’s that important time in every young person’s life when the uncomfortable topic of protection needs to be discussed. I know, I know, nothing bad is going to happen to you. We all say that until one day it does happen to us, and some things can’t be undone. That’s why we need to have this talk now about how well your data is protected.

Recently I had the unfortunate circumstance of having a hard drive physically fail on me. And by hard drive, I mean, well, a hard drive. It’d be 10 years since last that happened, and I was feeling pretty confident in my ability to retrieve lost data from pooched hard drives. I had too much data to back-up on CD or DVD and banked on a delicate balance of luck and geek knowledge to see me through data mishaps and issues. But there’s only so much one can do when a hard drive physically starts to shit the bed and here’s my solution that has me resting easy once again.

Redundant Storage
The key to data protection is simple, it’s not an easy easy answer, but it’s a simple one: Redundancy Redundancy Redundancy. If the data is in three places, then you would need three simultaneous catastrophes (or one really big one) to cause you total loss. The first step is in storage, where if your storage solution uses redundancy inherently, then a single hard drive failure can be easily recovered from.

I’ve chosen to purchase a Drobo 800, which uses EnhancedRAID technology to combine the powers of multiple hard drives into one super drive that can recover if one of the drives should happen to fall. The Drobo also pools all the hard drive space together so multiple 1.5TB drives act as one 4TB drive. The Drobo isn’t the end solution, there are scenarios where it wouldn’t be enough: two simultaneous hard drive failures or destruction of the Drobo unit would spell disaster for the data on it. But at 4TB worth of data, there aren’t many other back-up options available; I know what’s first on my list to grab in case of fire. I can build a new computer, but that Drobo is coming with me.

Beyond the Drobo, or if you can’t afford $350 for peace-of-mind, I also have two 1TB drives (one installed inside of my PC and one in an external USB HD enclosure) where I use Microsoft SyncToy to back-up the contents of the internal drive to the external drive on a nightly basis. This puts all of my music, pictures, and personal files onto an easy to remove & run device. Unlike the Drobo where between four hard drives the space of one is lost, the direct back-up method results in a 1:1 usage of space, so two hard drives only give the space of one.

Off-Site
As previously touched upon, a fire is still my worst nightmare. If I’m not home and my PC, Drobo, and external HD all melt and cinder, then having multiple levels of redundancy doesn’t amount to much when everything is in the same physical location. To protect against this problem, my most important files, my pictures, get uploaded to an on-line back-up service: Mozy. At $5/month for unlimited back-up storage, I put all of my photos on Mozy so in case all hell breaks loose, my most irreplaceable files are protected somewhere else entirely that I can then download onto a new computer.

Don’t Interrupt
Lastly, I added one more piece to my data protection puzzle: an Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS). We had a couple of 30 second black outs recently that were enough to shut my PC down. Shortly thereafter I started getting hard drive issues. I had my hardware on a surge protector, but when the lights go out, there’s nothing to protect against. I believe improperly shutting down may have contributed to my problems, so I picked up an APC UPS system that hooks up to my PC via USB to provide one more level of protected for my hard drives and data: in the event of a power outage, the UPS system will send a shutdown command to my PC so it will properly power down instead of instantly die.

That’s my three pronged attack to prevent any more painful data loss at home. Redundant file storage, online back-up, and a UPS device. Depending on your storage needs, you can bypass the local redundant storage entirely (such as you don’t need 4TB of storage space for video files and have less than 160GB of music) or use burnable optical media, and then only pay $5/month for unlimited on-line back-up space. More important than copying my set-up which fits my needs is that you follow the first point: Redundancy Redundancy Redundancy. Just get your important files into multiple places, ideally in multiple physical locations.

See larger image Data Robotics Drobo 4-Bay USB 2.0/FireWire 800 SATA Storage Array DR04DD10 (Electronics) List Price: Price Not Listed New From: Check Amazon For Pricing In Stock Used From: $349.00 In Stock

In 1987 “The Tracey Ullman Show” aired on a fledgling network called FOX. As bumpers to ease the show in and out of commercials, a short cartoon was produced. Conceived of by Matt Groening, “The Simpsons” quickly won over my 7 year old heart. I would stay up late Sunday nights to watch “The Tracey Ullman Show” with the hopes of catching “The Simpsons” bumpers. It’s not that I didn’t like the rest of the show, ’cause I did, just that “The Simpsons” were the highlight for me. The antics of the Simpsons family resonated with me, along with FOX’s other original program, “Married with Children”. FOX’s dysfunctional family trend was a great balance to NBC & the wholesome “The Cosby Show” (which I also watched and enjoyed).

Then in December of 1989, as if ol’ St. Nick wanted to reward me for having been the best little 9 year old boy in the world (I hadn’t), “The Simpsons” received their own half-hour show for Christmas with “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”. I anxiously awaiting the premiere, counting down the days more anxiously than Christmas morning itself. The day finally arrived and then more, even better news: what I thought was just a Christmas Special was actually the start of a regular series to begin in January 1990. Happy 10th Birthday to me! (”Bart the Genius” aired just 6 days before my birthday)

And thus it began. Here we are, over 22 years later and “The Simpsons” are in their 20th season having already been renewed to 22, and I am still a fan. To the right is a picture of me wearing my favorite t-shirt in 1990. That shirt disappeared one day, I never found out where it went. Presumably my mom threw it away as it was nothing more than technically a shirt after a couple years in that a halo of fabric kinda of wrapped itself around me. I had a plethora of Simpsons related merchandising from Bart Simpson dolls to stickers and posters. As I’ve gotten older, my Simpsons merchandising has simply matured. Instead of a simple t-shirt, I have a Pin-Pals bowling shirt and a Kwik-E-Mart shirt that button up to a Homer Simpson full-head rubber mask. Through gifts I’ve been given puzzles, card & board games, dolls & action figures, post cards, key chains, hula dancers, coasters, Magic 8 Balls … just about a little bit of everything. The one item I’ve always wanted and have never gotten: Simpsons Chess.

Now people may chime in with their idea on when the Simpsons have “jumped the shark”. As in the point in the shows history where it reached its apex of quality and signals that we are now on the slow decline of the show. While the show really experienced its heyday in the mid-to-late ’90s, it’s still managed to hold strong throughout the ’00s. And I’ve always contested anyways: even a bad episode of “The Simpsons” is still better the best episode of most other TV shows. As with a hometown sports team, I stick with the show through good episodes and the bad episodes, ride the low seasons along with the high seasons. In the end, the show still makes me laugh.

Returning to that vintage year of 2004 for me and blog writing, I’m pulling another look into the nature of my spirituality with the post “Pop Culture Theology” from August 10, 2004

So, Seth lent me volumes 3 & 4 of the Sandman comics. I’ve gotten hooked on them. They are so good. The fourth volume deals with Hell, and Lucifer getting sick of running Hell and quitting. God needs Hell to give meaning to Heaven and in the end appoints two more angels to run the place of eternal suffering. This reminded me a lot of another story that shaped my ideas of good and bad.

There are, actually, two bodies of work that I can pinpoint that have had a profound influence in my ideas of good and evil and balance. The first being Anne Rice’s Memnoch the Devil, the fifth book in the Vampire Chronicles; and the second being Se7en. I find it mildly embarrassing that these two works of entertainment have had a profound spiritual influence on my views … but then I also realize one can pull influence from anything, it’s all a matter of your perspective.

I remember reading Memnoch the Devil, most noticeably the scene where the devil and God are talking and God telling Memnoch that he needs him to run Hell. The story is remarkably similar to the Sandman story, where Memnoch was tired of being evil incarnate and wanted out. But in doing so would diminish the power of Heaven. And Memnoch was cast from Heaven not because he was evil … but simply because he did not agree with God.

This opened my eyes to the relatively of good and evil. One cannot exist without the other. They are two sides of the same coin. In being such, evil is not evil, but only so because of one’s perception of what is evil. One person’s evil is another person’s good. It’s a matter of perspective.

Hell exists because if it didn’t exist … if the Yin to Heaven’s Yang was absent … then Heaven would also not exist. Good cannot exist without evil. Because it is relative. If there was no evil, then the not as good would be evil. It’s simply a matter of degree, based on a person’s perceptions, a person’s judgment.

Next, comes Se7en, which spoke of the seven deadly sins. They represent excesses of humanity’s traits. Indulgences. From this I pulled my ideas of noble living. I’m not a religious person … I don’t think if I sit around, get fat, watch TV, and screw like a rabbit, that I’m going to Hell. I don’t view those as negative traits at all. I can see a societal function to getting people to believe that doing that would be bad, because our natural tendency is to do just that … why work when we can lounge, why not indulge in excess. But, how would one view their life when it is time for it to end? Would one look back and feel good about their time on Earth?

I’ve developed my sense of living a life that I would feel good about. This was helped by a previous revelation in my life several years previous where I thought about how I was living and how it wasn’t making me happy. When I was 14, I realized that lying, cheating, and stealing weren’t making me happy. I felt bad doing those things. And it could hurt people. So, I renounced those things and worked hard to no longer do them. I vowed to no longer lie, cheat, or steal. Though I’m not always 100% successful and occasionally give in to temptation, I try my best to be honest and to not hurt people.

This was fueled by Se7en when I thought of temptation and decided I would try hard to live nobly, to do my best to live my life to cause the least amount of pain in other people’s lives. I found that being aware of my actions and feelings, and how they related to these sins, helped me realize how my actions effected those around me. Now, I am by no means perfect and falter on these regularly, but I try to live as nobly as I can.

After seeing Se7en a couple times, I became sort of obsessed with the seven deadly sins, writing them in various notebooks and working them into an early version of my website I worked on in high school.

So, that’s how two examples of popular culture have shaped some of my spiritual views. There have been many other influences from people that I have crossed paths with at various times in my life, to other books and movies. I pull influence from everything around me.

Since writing this post, a couple other movies have shaped my ideas of spirituality beyond the Christian ideas of Memnoch or Se7en. Most notably Interstate 60, Bug and to a lesser degree I ♥ Huckabees.

It seems 2004 was a good year for me and blog writing as I’m pulling another post from that year. This one takes a look at how a being such as “god” would procreate, and I postulate that perhaps we’re part of that process. Here’s my old post Alternate View of “God” and Meaning of Life from July 12, 2004

Last night, Dougie and I played around with warping reality. We talked about VH1’s Best Week Ever, and he mentioned how in 2140, it will probably be used by some college student doing his doctorate on early 21st Century Pop Culture. I sided with it probably never seeing the light of day because of the amount of stuff that we pump out, it will likely be overshadowed by other stuff that would remain in the collective unconscious, and it would fade away.

He said then, that fine, he would live to be a 160 and convince some college student to use Best Week Ever in a paper just to prove me wrong. I told him, excellent, e-mail me the results so I can be proven wrong. I would be found in a computer farm in the Midwest with my consciousness, along with many others, in an advanced computer system.

So, I am now expecting an e-mail in 2140 from Dougie with a college student’s paper using Best Week Ever as a source.

We also talked about the future of existence. I had blabbed on about it to Jim earlier in the night, but when Doug brought up Stargate SG-1 where the Asgard’s bodies are pretty frail, it brought up ideas I had talked about earlier. Essentially, the theory is the Asgard are so advanced mentally that their bodies are suffering from atrophy because their use their minds and technology for so much. Now, further down in evolution, there might come to a point where they no longer even need their bodies, and they would become pure consciousness. I think this could happen in human evolution, as well.

But, what if using technology to implant ourselves into a computer system would speed up this process, because we’d be removing ourselves from our bodies and that could allow our minds, our consciousness to develop without the limits imposed by existing inside a physical form. Doug mentioned we’d just be replacing one physicality with another, the computer system, but what I countered with that’s not necessarily true. Because in the computer system, our consciousness would exist without limits because our existence would purely abstract.

Then, I thought what if the purpose of Life, The Universe, and Everything is to create a consciousness that transcends the physical plane. A being of pure thought. What if this has happened many times before, and that God, a being of pure thought and power, actually did create the Universe. But, created an existence with a set of rules that would eventually lead by a series of evolutionary steps that would result in a species, or even a single entity that would transcend and become like him.

What if existence is God’s way of reproduction.

How else is a being of pure thought going to procreate? It wouldn’t be sexually, or with another being. It’d have to be through pure creation. To create a Universe, a set of rules, that would result in another. Kind of like a mother chicken with her egg. She creates it and then watches over it as inside the chick grows. God created the rules, and is ever present as his creation slowly evolves, eventually, in a very long time, to a point where the result will be another God.

He did create man in his image. Just not directly.

So, we’re not even the final stage of evolution. We’re kinda in the middle somewhere. Much like how early land-walkers had underdeveloped legs to walk on … but they had them and used them. Maybe our consciousness are still evolving and it’s underdeveloped. It has much further to go before it’s finished. So there’s so much more for the human race to learn and do … we just aren’t there yet.

And if this is true, and God does exist as pure thought, then he would also exist outside of time, since we’re traveling through time in only one direction, so our perception is completely skewed with time moving linearly with what’s happening next completely unknown. It would be nearly impossible for us to comprehend fully time moving non-linearly simply because we have not experienced it. There’s nothing relatable for us to pull understanding from. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. It was inconceivable that the Earth could be round or that it wasn’t the center of all existence.

What if God was a being that existed outside of time, then that would make him all-knowing. So, his creation in the Universe would be infallible. So, nothing that happens would be wrong. Everything is happening precisely as it is supposed to happen. That doesn’t mean sit back and don’t do anything, because you’re supposed to do something. Everything that happens is to advance the human race and evolve consciousness. But, we can rest assured that everything we’re doing is right … both the “good” and the “bad”. But we should be striving for the advancement of our race … at least from my perspective.

But then again, what if we’re a stepping stone in evolution, and we’re not even the the branch that is going to be the final product. Or, maybe this really is all like an egg, and at the end only one consciousness will break free and destroy the Universe and everything that we recognize as existence and reality in order to transcend. Kind of like a chick breaking open its egg.

Or maybe it’s a collective thing, where our consciousness doesn’t disappear or go to “Heaven” … but collects. The idea of the collective unconscious could be the result of consciousness building on itself. It already transcends the physical and time planes. It could explain the leaps in human inventions where ideas seemingly come out of thing air. It’s from an absence of time, or freedom from it.

It destroys the entire existence it knows up until that point to start new in a bigger one. Though, an astute critic will point out that I’m drawing lines of comparison between things I know and understand with something I’m making up, so it’s flawed. But, if the greater scope of things is something completely different than everything we know and understand, the best we can do is try to figure it out with past experiences and hope eventually the truth will come out.

Then maybe there are many other Gods, beings of pure thought and consciousness, existing outside of our perceptions of time, and they each have created their Universes for the same purpose. And then all these other Universes also result in new consciousness.

And I find it particularly interesting that this idea would essentially prove everyone fundamentally right. Except for the atheists, but screw them anyway (personally, I’m agnostic).

Just some more of the ideas floating around in my head.

I don’t necessarily believe that this is how things are. That there is a “god” and we’re its children on an evolutionary path to become its equals. Though, I do believe there is an evolutionary path that could take consciousness beyond physical form and create god-like beings, but I don’t believe that our Universe was created by one of these beings.

And after I made this posting, Stargate SG-1 delved more into the themes that were talked about with the Ancients and Ascension. They also explained why the Asguard weren’t looking to Ascension as a solution to their genetic problems. So, Dougie & I weren’t too far off from a future envisioned by the Stargate writing staff.

In the next of the Flashback series of posts where I dig up old entries, clean them up, and put them back on display is one from June 24, 2005 titled “Fuck the road less traveled; take no road and blaze a new trail.“:

I was thinking last night about religion, as I often do when it crosses my mind, and I realized why religion has never been attractive to me. Organized religion is a destination, whereas to me, my spirituality is a journey. I don’t view my connection with the Universe to be as simple as going to my local Jesusmart and picking up some salvation on the way to the deli. Yet, the major religions tell you that if you go to church and do as they say, then you’ll go into Heaven and get to laugh at all the heathens burning in Hell. They give you a simplistic description of God, read from a book, and ask for money.

The reason I have a problem with the religion as destination idea is because nobody can tell you what God is. The language doesn’t exist to describe it. But, in order to make it relatable to someone who hasn’t been on a spiritual journey and is limited to language, God has been transformed into a human-like entity described with fuzzy words like “omnipotent”. Just as we now laugh at the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians for their simplistic view of the world as Gods and Goddesses fighting and intervening in their lives; I think people will similarly regard monotheistic religions for their simplistic view of the world as being created and overseen by a God. Because, I don’t think you can break down and describe what God is, because we don’t have ways to properly communicate it.

And without the language to properly communicate it, we aren’t able to completely grasp it, either, because we aren’t even able to properly communicate it with ourselves. That’s where the spiritual journey comes into play. I know that I don’t know squat about the true secrets of the Universe. I have never seen the world for what it is. I have never experience a moment for what it truly was. Because every sight, sound, taste, feeling, experience, thought is run through my brain and gets processed and analyzed, so by the time I’m aware of it, it’s already been filtered, organized, described, and cataloged. But, I am on a path that I believe will allow me to grow beyond these boundaries of my brain and be able to actually experience a moment of utter clarity, where I witness the Universe for what it is.

I think holding on to this concept of God being a single conscious being who willed everything into existence and is now sitting back and watching us like a giant ant farm is completely simplified. I don’t know what God is, but I think trying to apply analogies of human beings and human emotions and desires is the path to Getting It Very Very Wrong. But for you, that will be the Universe, because your brain will filter and process the input it gets from the outside world in such a way that everything will fit into this idea. But that doesn’t mean it’s how things really are.

That’s why I refer to my spirituality as a journey. I don’t expect to read a book and completely get God and the Secrets of the Universe, because I don’t yet have the proper concepts to understand it. And that’s why I don’t think religion is the answer, because no one can tell you anything about God that would truly describe what it is, because there’s no way to get across the true idea with words. It’s like trying to describe the color red to someone who’s blind. The best anyone can do is help you reach the answers yourself.

And the path is different for everyone. The Universe isn’t an Equal Opportunity Employer, and everyone starts off at different places, and reacts to the world in different ways. As such, the road to clarity, and working through the muck is going to be different. That’s why I think the catch all methods of religion “just do this, this, aaaaaand this, and salvation can be yours” are flawed, because they aren’t directing people to follow their path to spirituality. They’re putting a wrapper on it, telling you you’re home, and encouraging you to go no further.

Because in reality, you don’t need a church. You don’t need someone telling you what you’re doing right and wrong. You simply need to open yourself up to the world around you. Don’t bother listening to someone else tell you what God is. Let it tell you itself; just listen. It’s all around you. It is you.

I’m an Alantologist. An Alanist. Allahn.

* you may say to me “Alan, religion isn’t a destination, it’s a journey, too. You have to work at being a good person by their rules.” Well, then that’s not a real journey, then is it. It’s fine tuning and error correction.

My spiritual journey isn’t complete, but I’m still on it. I believe now that Douglas Adams had it right … it’s not an answer I’m looking for, but the question.

For 8 years and 1 week I’ve been writing blog entries sporadically on various platforms, some of the blog systems I wrote myself. I’m looking to dig through the 5,000 entries I’ve already created, pulling out some gems, polishing them off, and putting them out on display again. I’ll make slight spelling and grammar edits, but I’m not going to be adding much. I don’t dig the Lucas Treatment.

I’m going to start with a post made on June 3, 2005 titled “Associative Memories“:

I was thinking about our brains this morning. Not in the zombie Braiiiiins sorta way, but more about how our minds use associative memories. Like that previous sentence. I watch lots of zombie movies, and so in my mind, brains and zombies have a close association. Just by typing the word “brains”, I instantly thought Revenge of the Living Dead and the zombies chanting “braiiiins” over and over again as they stalked humans because bringing up one idea or memory automatically fired up any other ideas or memories that share a close association.

This also works with emotions. You associate emotions with memories just as much as you associate memories with each other. Since I’m writing an LJ post that brings up associations of humor for me (or perhaps anger if I’m venting), when brought up brains before, it could have helped strengthen the zombie connection. If I was writing an angry post, the association may have been different with something much more violent, and ultimately resulting in the destruction of said brain. One’s emotional state has an effect on the strength of associations memories have with each other.

If you create enough connections between memories and a particular emotion, you can even become addicted to them, and your brain will begin to fire off thought processes through associative memories with a particular emotion just to feel it, to get the biological fix associated with that emotion. You can become addicted to anger; you can become addicted to depression; you can become addicted to happiness. It’s all a matter of how strong these emotional ties are with your memories and how your body is reacting to the physical aspects of emotions.

Essentially, these associative memories are programming your mind, and play a huge roll in your personality and how you think. As such, someone who believes they can’t do things begins to associate failure and low self-esteem with various aspects of their lives. And then, in turn, when they bring up the memories of these events, they’re feeling those emotions again, and strengthening the associative bond, and even connecting it to more memories. Then, if these associations become strong enough and effect enough memories, whenever said person starts associating these emotions with every aspect of their life, and eventually their body could become addicted to the chemical reactions in the body and the mind will answer this addiction with making you feel it more often and more intense. It’ll turn into a viscous cycle, and it can happen with anything.

It’s how behavioral patterns get passed on from person to person, almost like a disease or a virus. Through your outside actions, you can start creating these associations in other people, and it may even mutate or be a reactionary one. Children who are sexually molested are more likely to molest children when they’ve grown up, probably because of certain associations that are created in the brain. People who are attacked can either start to become violent, or start to take on the mentality of a victim. And people who are treated with kindness create bonds of trust and generosity.

But, you do have control over this. It’s all a matter of making the right associations and connections in your brain. And it’s not a matter of just saying “I’m happy” or “I’m going to succeed”, as that’s just putting a layer of goodness on a big pile of crappy underlying negativity. I can say “Hitler was a prophet sent down from God”, but that doesn’t mean I believe it. But, saying stuff like that is a start. It’s planting seeds of association. But, it’s more important to feel the emotion. So, if you’re doing something that makes you sad, then think happier thoughts or do things that make you happy to try to create good associations. If you’re doing something and think you’re going to fail, then you more than likely will; but if you try to believe that you can do it, and start create confidence related associations then you are more likely to bring up other associations with confidence and success and will be more likely to succeed because you’re mind is operating in a capacity to support it. If you just throw darts at a board without aiming you may hit the board sometimes, but you’re going to miss most, but if you try and aim, you may miss sometimes, but you’re more likely to get the bulls eye. Unless you really suck at darts, in which case replace the analogy with something you are good at that involves aiming. Perhaps skeeball?

I guess it is the same thing behind the Power of Positive Thinking, but I view it more as emotional states. For an example, look at yoga instructors. The ones who take it seriously and believe it always have that shit eating grin of contentment on their faces. Yoga is a very relaxing exercise/spiritual path, and people who have done it for a long time have created strong associations of relaxation and tranquility in their minds, so they actually become addicted to being calm (just my theory). Not to dismiss any spiritual angle to it, as this could simply be one piece to the whole. It’s also why I dropped out of the BU yoga class I was in when I went there. After a couple weeks it became clear that it was about being able to do certain postures and not about relaxation and meditation. I didn’t want to create associations of goals and objectives with yoga, because that’s not what it’s about, and introducing these ideas didn’t bring up relaxation associations that I usually felt.

It’s definitely been something I’ve been working on for a while. I have lots of associative bonds that I’ve been trying to break, and then at the same time trying to reinforce positive associations. The simplest way I’ve come up with doing is just to do it. The whole “do or do not, there is not try” mentality, I guess. You can feel and think whatever the hell it is you want, so there’s no reason you can’t have control over that. But, that’s all easier said than done. It’s all a process.

I initially started thinking about this when I was thinking about if I fit the description of Aquarian because of any astrological reasons, or if I recognized Aquarian traits in the sense of the Law of Fives, and have subsequently begun strengthening associations of these traits and essentially becoming more Aquarian.

In the over 4 years since I wrote that post, I’ve definitely come a long way in altering my associations and changing my world perceptions. I’ve also moved quite a ways away from where I was living. That alone allowed me to create lots of fresh associations, but more importantly I’ve worked through some deep-rooted associations. I have more, but as one of my ideas at Burning Man this year states:

I’m always growing, because if I’m perfect then what’s left to strive for? Perfection is death, imperfection is life.

What would you do In Case of Zombies? You need to have a Zombie Plan, and if you don’t already have one you need to go make one. Don’t roll your eyes at me. Or speak with that tone! If you don’t have a Zombie Plan, you’ll be fodder for the undead hordes that will inevitably show up at your doorstep. I’ll help you craft one and show you the valuable life skills it can help foster. Include the whole family, make planning out what to do In Case of Zombies a bonding experience with your children or parents, because they may be the ones who save your life … or ultimately end your death.

So the zombies have arrived. Now what?
In creating your first Zombie Plan, it’s important to remind yourself: it’s not a matter of if the zombies will attack, but when. If you don’t take the threat seriously now, then you won’t take the threat seriously until a pair of rotting chompers are embedded deep in your shoulder. And then where would you be? On the receiving end of a can a whoop ass by someone who took their Zombie Plan seriously, that’s where. And since you’re reading my blog, I feel like we have this thing going, and so I’d kinda like to see you make it at least through the first wave.

It is important to know when is an appropriate time to enact your Zombie Plan. I’ve struggled with defining that moment for a while, and I would love some legal advice on the subject. Particularly, can the Zombie Defense work in a court of law? And can a blog entry be used as evidence by court psychiatrists? With defining when it’s the right time to start killing the until recently dead, you have to at least make sure that: (1) there are no video cameras – this can be an indication that you somehow walked onto a movie set, or (depending on how my legal questions turn out) could be used as evidence; (2) they are not so much shuffling as stumbling – while the urge to kill them may feel just as justified at the time, they could actually be participants of a Zombie Crawl; and (3) it’s not just an anorexic cheerleader looking for a quick way to make $20.

I guess the best answer I can give is that as long as your plan involves the right steps, you should ideally be able to hold off a horde of zombies, or the Sheriff’s Departments from 5 counties.

Pick your initial location.
Realize that your plan should first and foremost get you out of harms way as soon as possible, and preferably in a place that allows you to regroup for an all out assault. As the populace awakens to the fact that the dead are awakening around them, chaos is going to bloom as people without Zombie Plans run around like a zombie chicken with its head still on. So it’s important to get out of the way of the unprepared, because they’re lost anyway. Get yourself somewhere safe and secure immediately. Your first plan should thusly avoid picking a specific location and instead focus on a type of location. Don’t pick “Grocery Store X on the corner of 72nd & Washington” because you happen to like how they double bag your potatoes. If you’re nowhere near your chosen location when the zombie outbreak begins, then you might as well not even have a Zombie Plan at all. In time as you develop more Zombie Plans, you can start making plans for specific circumstances you are likely to be in, or even create that ideal situation. But your first plan should your most generic.

You’ll ideally want to pick a location that can satisfy as many basic needs as possible: food, supplies, materials for making weapons. You’ll want to think outside of the Big Box if possible, because everybody else is going to be swarming the superstores and malls. And following them are going to be all the zombies who have no where else to go because everyone else is going to the superstores and malls. Just like no good punk kids.

Use your head … take off theirs.
The next part of your Zombie Plan should account for how you’re going to destroy the brains of your undead foe. Guns seem like a great idea at first, but that’s the type of short-sighted thinking that separates the men from lunch. Bullets are noisy, guns can jam, and without the complete system the individual parts are pretty useless. After years of careful analysis I’ve come to the conclusion that the longbow for long-distance attacks combined with a samurai sword for in-close combat is a winning combination. Sign up for those archery classes now and get a copy of The Last Samurai, because on-the-job training isn’t nearly as fun when your boss truly is a heartless bastard.

Contingency Plans
The strength of a good Zombie Plan is subplans, contingency plans, or alterations that can be made on-the-fly as the situation demands. Planning on making it to the local shopping mall sounds great, until you get there and an over-zealous mall security guard decides he wants the food court all to himself. Now what? Plan 25-D! Unfortunately for the security guard, Plan 25, Subplan D involves lots of explosives, some expletives, and a whole lot of indiscriminate killing.

I only need to be faster than you.
Preferably, we’d like to keep the pudgy security guard alive, and eating all the deep-fried foods he wants, because in a pinch he’d make a great diversion. Disabling a member of your party to attract the zombies’ attention away from you as you gracefully make your exit is a plan of last resort, but that doesn’t make it any less of a plan. Just don’t go around telling everyone about that last Zombie Plan. We’ll keep that one to ourselves.

Just like you don’t need to know that I actually have 33 Zombie Plans.

Zombie Plans as Life Plans
Being properly prepared for the inevitable rise of the fallen may seem like a silly pursuit by the delusional, but the skills and forethought crafted while drafting Zombie Plans can be used in many different apocalyptic scenarios. It may not end up being zombies this time, but a good set of plans would also help should you encounter killer robots, barbaric desert folk led by pop divas, or the wrath of God. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: “Head Shots! Head shots … works on zombies, works on people who don’t know how to keep their mouths shut!”

That’s why our kids will be taught basic zombie survival skills at a very early age. They will have basic camping, hunting, and self-defense skills and $20 in their pockets. And they will know how to keep their mouths shut.

Kindergarten was the last time in my life that I remember learning something that hasn’t needed to be unlearned in some regard at some point in my life. The alphabet is pretty much the same now as it was in 1984, and the days of the week haven’t gone through redefinition. Recent scientific discoveries haven’t changed the color blue, and technological break-throughs while quickening the pace of change haven’t caused September, April, June or November to not have 30 days nor the rest (except February) to not have 31 (though the less said about the leap second, the better, February is still having identity issues with that one). What I learned in kindergarten has brought me far in life, and it has much farther to take me. But everything I learned after that, well, that’s all up for debate. And much of it has been.

Either through changes in definition, discovery of new information, advances in technology, or purposeful deception here are some of the things I was taught in school that later I had to unlearn.

In the school of astronomy, there have been many new discoveries that have redefined our view of the Universe. For example, until fairly recently our solar system consisted of a star, 9 planets & their moons, asteroids & comets, with a healthy sprinkling of dust. Our neighborhood felt pretty settled in; we knew who lived here, and we weren’t expecting there to be any moving vans taking up the street any time soon. But then, as if we were in a cheesy horror movie, something came from the darkness. The Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune proved that Pluto wasn’t necessarily as much of an oddity as it first appeared; it had some drinkin’ buddies. In response, Pluto has been booted from the Planet Country Club, and a new class of “dwarf planets” has been crafted for the Plutoids. And now, we are down to 8 planets. Old friends of mine had a mnemonic device for remembering the order of the planets, and it looks like now they aren’t getting their “Pizza”.

That’s “local” astronomy. For a more galactic scale bit of revelations came from being taught about the theories surrounding black holes, as at the time they were as mysterious as the contents of the meatloaf we had for lunch in the cafeteria. Our current understanding now extends to there being supermassive black holes, and that they exist at the center of every or nearly every galaxy. So, that’s a whole lot of book learnin’ that didn’t exist in the books I was learnin’ from as a kid.

At the rate textbooks get published, schools go through book buying cycles, and school curriculum gets updated compared to the increasing rate in which scientific discoveries are made, I’m not even sure how much information being taught in schools is up-to-date at any given point. I’m not even confident how many adults are aware that our solar system now only has 8 planets.

Beyond the stars, here on Earth, even our histories are being rewritten at an ever growing pace. The beliefs of where we came from had come a long way themselves, but there were still lots of holes and gaps in the scientific theories that made them as credible as any other creation myth. Many to this day still live in fear of “The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief”, no matter what new anthropological or genetic discoveries are made. The missing links have pretty much been filled in; we did not evolve from monkeys – for one, monkeys have tails, we don’t, we’re apes – we have a common ancestor as monkeys & other apes; we did not evolve from Neanderthals, we displaced them from Europe and possibly cross-bred; and we did not spontaneously evolve around the world simultaneously, we started in Africa and a tribe of 200 emigrated around 70,000 years ago. That’s a whole lotta our family tree that’s been filled in recently.

And then there’s the dinosaurs. Those crazy dinos. While there have been lots of smaller discoveries, nothing was as hard to initially swallow as the revelation that every bird evolved from dinosaurs. The mass riots from the ridiculousness of the mere suggestion took years to rebuild from. But slowly, with time as our wounds healed, so did the acceptance that the cute parakeet in the cage that you always thought would peck your eyes out without a moments hesitation did in fact come from the same genetic stock as the Velociraptors in Jurassic Park.

My idea of what in the world was in the world before I was has been written, rewritten, erased, updated, appended, and finally just tossed out and started over so many times that all I care about at this point is that I never did like that parakeet, and we’re all one big happily family.

As much as we’ve learned about where we’ve been, as little we know about where we’re going. With advancements in technology being measured in months at times instead of decades or years, by the time anything does make it to the school level to be taught, it truly is out-of-date. In the Did You Know video on YouTube, it states that the “Top 10 jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004″. Think about that for a second, I can wait as long as you need for that to sink in. Ready? Another bit of information from that same video later on states “For students starting a 4 year technical degree … half of what they study will be outdated by their third year of study”. Ok, now let that marinade too.

Schools can teach foundations and concepts, but any applicable information become irrelevant, and frequently the foundations and concepts becomes out-dated, too. When I was in grade school I was learning BASIC on an Apple IIe. There is practically no value in knowing that, nor has having learned it as an intro to programming concepts been anything that isn’t covered in one page in the introduction of even the most basic of computer classes now. We do, indeed, live in exponential times, so this is only going to get worse with time.

But beyond a structured school system’s inability to stay relevant in technology classes comes the flat out lies and deceptions I’ve had to rinse and repeat out of my head. Mostly having to do with rewriting American history from the glorified propaganda.

Most recently, I’ve had to come to terms that the buffalo did not almost disappear entirely from the American plains land because of over hunting. Well, not hunting in the sense I was led to believe anyway. It all came from when I learned how Buffalo Bill got his name, and why the latter years of his life were filled with such regret and remorse. For you see, Buffalo Bill got his name when he was in the U.S. military and followed orders to starve out the Native Americans in the plains of their main natural resource by killing entire herds of buffalo and leaving the carcasses to rot. Now I loooooove me some buffalo meat. It’s super yummy in my tummy. It’s so lean and sweet, the fact that this delicious animal almost went extinct saddens me; but to learn that billions of pounds worth of this meat jamboree went to complete and utter waste enrages me! I feel betrayed beyond description. Buffalo, not cows, should be the U.S. staple red meat.

And the list goes on. And on. Back up because some of the new stuff got rewritten. And back down the list. The more I learn, the more I know that I don’t know.

But all that stuff in kindergarten about sharing, playing well with others, and the importance of naptime … that stuff I’ll always remember.