The liberal media is determined to let the zombies win. One of the fundamental tools we have to avoid - or at least survive - the coming zombie apocalypse is our ever-present vigilance, and thus to present a hero's attempt at warning his community of imminent attack as mere vandalism hurts us all. Of course, it hurts the people who get eaten more, but my ideological pain is nearly as acute, if not so bloody. And it doesn't involve me screaming desperately for mercy that will never come, either. Or rising some time later, an undead mockery of my former self, to maraud the streets for flesh. But they are still reminiscent of each other. On a certain, abstract level.
But I digress. Last Monday, a champion put himself or herself in the line of fire to reprogram two electronic detour signs in Austin, TX with such warnings as CAUTION! ZOMBIES AHEAD! and even more chilling, NAZI ZOMBIES! RUN!!! The "journalist" who
reported this incident offered no details on whether the undead have begun dabbling in sinister political ideologies or if these zombies had simply persisted since 1942 Germany, though I imagine the presence or absence of helmets with pointy spikes on top would pretty much answer that one for us.
What did become clear, though, was that the reporter's ignorance of zombies was second only to her ignorance of how difficult it is to reprogram a sign. The author, who I'll call "Katie Petrosky of
All Ablog Austin," reports that "the hacker could be a computer genius from UT." Now, I've become accustomed over the years to the imprecise uses to which people put the language, and sadly, I've become relatively resigned. I remain mute when a stranger says a hamburger is "fucking fantastic," when clearly it is neither "extravagantly fanciful" nor do they have their penis in their entree. I smile reassuringly when a student confesses a paper "sucks," knowing that it is less an evaluation of the composition's quality as how reading it drains the light from my life, nay, my very soul. But even the most resigned of men must draw the line somewhere, and so when some Luddite deems the reprogramming of an electronic road sign the work of a "computer genius," I must protest. Just because you think the spirits living inside your laptop are playing pranks when you accidentally erase the email from that Nigerian prince you've been meaning to help out doesn't mean the guy who broke open an orange lock box and entered a pass code is a "genius." It does mean you might be retarded, though.
If these warnings were genuine, though, we have little to worry about the reporter passing the idiot gene to what would have undoubtedly been a nigh-Biblical amount of offspring. You see, her parting quip was that "with any luck, Tuesday night’s cold front killed off any undead with ghoulish plans to invade the city." Okay. Calm down. Count to ten. Now: 1) zombies don't really have "plans," so much as an inescapable instinct to gorge themselves on human flesh; and 2) the cold won't do a good God damn thing to them, seeing as how they're already dead. Of course, their fingers may be a little more blackened and stiff as they drag you from your Starbucks laptop station, but I assure you, their jaws are still strong, and their teeth sharp. Would I could say the same about your intellect.
My thanks to Tina for passing this little gem along to me, and to Ryan for giving me dibs at venting my spleen at this poor reporter. I feel considerably better now. Not, you know, about myself, but at least about this whole thing.
My, oh my. The grow up so very fast.
