Mr. Evin's Zombies

Mr. Evins leaves the shopping mall with his doctor’s bag only 25 minutes before the first outbreak. He walks to his car, enters it, starts the engine, and pulls forward out of the space he had backed into only 1440 seconds before the first infected leaps for the place his bumper was, missing it by a foot. He begins playing a Mozart CD 2 minutes later or, 22 minutes before the zombie, standing by the stop sign at the parking lot exit, lets out a tuba like moan. He turns left onto Benison Avenue only 21 minutes worth of moments before the zombie child reaches for the handle of his car door, which was no longer there.

Mr. Evins drives down Benison at a lazy pace, averaging 15 minutes ahead of the chaos of the zombie all-u-can-eat apocalypse buffet. He makes a quick left onto Amrack Boulevard 19 minutes before a split second of time when a 1977 Lincoln Continental whisks by, behind where he was, hitting the curb rising into the air and somersaulting into the plate-glass windows of a Whataburger. Mr. Evins turns right onto Peligrina 18 minutes and 59 seconds before the acrobatic car bursts into flame.

He crosses Cleveland 15 minutes and 23 seconds before a pickup truck covered in gore and full of armed teenagers goes racing north past the intersection of Peligrina and Cleveland. He proceeds half a block further along Peligrina and pulls into his driveway 13 minutes and 3 seconds before his neighbor Mr. Jernett, bolting out of the Jernett residence with blood gushing from his neck, falls behind the hedge separating their properties.

Mr. Evins picks up his bag from passenger seat and exits his car. He walks to his front door along a pink gravel path and up three cement steps. He unlocks his door 10 minutes and 10 seconds before the police helicopter, flying low over the rooftops, collides with the two-story house three lots away. Mr. Evins enters the front hall and closes the three windowed Craftsman style door. He enters his kitchen and dumps the contents of his bag on the oak breakfast table, carefully counting out the 7 empty syringes 8 minutes and 16 seconds before the sonic shockwave of gas tanks exploding rattles the frame of his wooden house.

Mr. Evins takes a glass from the white tiled kitchen counter, opens the refrigerator and takes out a pitcher of lemonade and pours himself a glass 6 minutes before Mrs. Evins locks herself into the handicapped restroom at the shopping mall while all around people go mad.

He takes the glass of lemonade and walks back out the front door and stands on the porch sipping the lemonade for 5 minutes and 30 seconds. He takes a deep breath and sits down on the swing adorning his front porch 1 second before the world ends.

Story notes:

The Gap

This is one of the greatest novels ever written and it’s interesting to see what people draw from it.

The Consumerist has a short post about 5 Thrifty Lessons From Post-Apocalyptic Novel “The Road”.

noisenoisenoise

I ran across a music blog this evening. It’s called noisenoisenoise and Dave, the author, has a discerning taste in music that I can appreciate – so I thought I’d share. He say’s he’s “total rock snob” and that’s fine, I like his selection of music so I really don’t care if he’s a snob. There are a bunch of artists I like (fIREHOSE, Lord High Fixers, Lubricated Goat, Lydia Lunch, etc.) mentioned in the blog though I am surprised that some bands that seem likely to show up are unlisted. Then again it doesn’t claim to be an exhaustive list. There are quite a few bands I haven’t heard but will doubtlessly check out. The post that caught my eye was fIREHOSE – fROMOHIO (SST) 1990. Check it out – there are quite a few video samples there too so you can get an earful.

First Edition hardcover of Cormac McCarthy's The Road

I’m currently reading Comac McCarthy’s The Road. I’m about half-way through. I have to say that so far this novel (which come on, you have to admit) qualifies as science fiction, regardless of the fact that Michael Chabon doesn’t want to admit the truth. That it’s science fiction is a compliment, of course, as science fiction is that last literature of ideas whereas contemporary fiction is about modern life and, frankly, not very interesting for those living modern lives.

But I digress, The Road is gut wrenching and heartbreakingly sad. It’s generally known that it takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where unknown catastrophe (likely full scale nuclear war, but no why) has decimated the Earth and humanity. The Road’s story is that of a father and son traveling to find a better place to be, a place where it is there might be a possible chance. The desolation is immense, the trials horrifying. I can think of no other novel that depicts the dire nature of such a world in a way so realistically portrays the horror of an apocalypse. There is nothing to hold on to, nothing to grab, there’s no food, no animals, no society. Most humans have been reduced to atavistic primitives. Cannibalism runs rampant. But the father and son hold on to each other – an almost invisible spark of love in a world gone away, a last remnant of humanity.

The Road pulls at the heart but also shows just how much we depend on our environment, and it is worth considering. George Monbiot has much more to say on the relation of The Road to human apathy and environmentalism.

To me though, The Road, entangles my soul and heart as a father and envision myself in the same situation with my son. To me that struggle the love of a father for son and the ends to which a parent will go to care for a child, the abyssal fears we face on a daily basis in that struggle to raise our sons.

Everyone should read The Road. I can think of no novel more worthy of the Pultizer Prize.

Programming?

I’m supposed to either be doing some coding or creating and applying certificates to a couple of servers but frankly I don’t have the motivation right now. My mind is elsewhere for one thing. In other words I think I’ve been here long enough today and done enough today to call it quits.

At least I have a decent selection of music here. Headphones. Can’t hear my co-workers right now. I’ve got a couple of errands I need to run after work but I really just want to sleep. I’ve been getting up at 5 or 6 in the morning these days and as some of you know that used to be my bedtime. I guess children change that but even so there’s no really need for me to be up at that time I just keep waking up early. Unfortunately I keep going to sleep at midnight or later. On the plus side when I go to sleep I sleep the whole time which is not something I used to do much.

Let’s see what am I working on otherwise? I just rebuilt Melanie’s website with some PHP, Flash and CSS and all that. We got a lot more paintings added and the comments section now works – it wasn’t supposed to be up on the old site yet somehow I managed to upload the last development version on the old server. Oh well.

I’m trying to finish up my own site (not this one) – also written using CSS and PHP. It’s more of a coding site/freelancing site. But it’s not done so you can’t see it yet.

I’m also working on a super secret and exciting music website project. It’s still on the dl so I’m not saying anymore about it right now.

Aside from web programming what else? I’m trying to write more – I’m currently working on a screenplay for a film. It’s noir Faustian horror/thriller. I’m planning on shooting and directing it sometime in the relatively near future – but I’d like to finish the screenplay first. I’m also thinking about making one or two shorter films (i.e. 5 to 10 minutes long.) So basically I’m thinking about setting aside the full length noir faustian story for the time being and ripping out a couple of short texts with little dialogue and just shooting them. I’ve got a decent MiniDV camera but one othe errands mentioned earlier includes getting a new battery for the thing.

Speaking about writing I actually bought a really small laptop recently (an Averatec 1150) so that I would write more often and not be stuck in my office as I am often more inspired to write when sitting outside (e.g. the back porch, Genuine Joe’s, etc.) And mostly I prefer type writing to paper and pencil for anything extensive as I tend to write somewhat more lucidly. At least I hope so. I also feel compelled to write in general these days but I’m not sure journaling is my forte but there you go.

Speaking of going – I need to go get some info together for some servers and maybe a Mac.

The Talking Heads

I’ve been missing many of my friends whom I haven’t seen or heard from in a many year. I’m very happy to have gotten in a touch with some of them over the past couple years. And more recently through the power of the internet I have come back into contact with even more friends. I’m not talking about high-school chums but some of the most interesting people I have known. And somehow, through life, you go your separate ways and lose track of each other and wonder, “What the hell happened?” Sometimes it feels like a Talking Heads song (your choice of song but you probably know the one I mean.) But I’m glad to see that these friends are still alive and vital. And all these people who I have come back into contact with, well, it’s quite amazing, the changes that have occurred, how different they are from ten or fifteen years ago. Yet, when talking to them it’s as if no time has passed, expect there are new topics of conversation that were quite impossible years ago, children in some case, or the internet or even blogging.

There have been times when I thought my desire to still know these prodigal friends was a sign of an impending midlife crisis but the more I think of it the more I realize that is not the case. It’s sublimely human to love our friends, wish them well and know they are there to talk to (or email), exchange ideas and thoughts with and to know that the bonds of friendship last. So I cannot quite express what a joy it is for me to know my friends and I hope to know them for a very long time.

Jagwire X

Really. I should post more items on this thing. There’s tons of interesting stuff out there but how much time do I really want to spend doing this.

Let’s travel back in time…

It’s 1988 (or so) and I’m trying to think of a good name to use on the BBSs. BBS stands for Bulletin Board System. For those of you who weren’t there BBSs were the World Wide Web of their day. I want something futuristic and cyberpunk sounding yet primal. I’m driving on US 183 heading South into Austin from somewhere north and think about this. I’m either extremely tired from working a graveyard shift or god knows what, then again if you are one of my parents reading this, I probably wasn’t. I see billboard, if you can really call a 30 foot tall photograph and logo a billboard, with a picture of a Jaguar (the car) on it, then it hits me: jaguar (U.S. pronunciation) + hardwire = jagwire.

That’s where the name comes from.

Fast forward to now.

If you search Google for the term jagwire you will mostly find a bunch of trademarked corporate businesses. If you look up jagwire at the US Trademark & Patent Office you’ll see that the earliest recorded trademark was was in 1996. Frankly this kind of pisses me off – I mean, hell, I have a tattoo on my left arm that represents the name to me. Dig down a little further on Google, using the full name I commonly used in BBS days, Jagwire X, you will find links to my past. I’m tempted to see what it would take to challenge the trademark, especially if I decide to use the name for something. I can pretty much prove (1992|1993) that my use of the name predates any trademarked use of the name and probably any other use of the name either.

With all these mentions of the name Jagwire on this page I’ll probably go up in the google rankings. Woot!

Ok enough ranting.