What was I saying? Oh yes.

Anyway, it’s time to prepare. But you don’t want to give away all your junk. Admit it, you’re still only halfway through that Fringe Season 2 box set you picked up at Target last week and you’ve just begun your MTV adaptation of War and Peace that you know will make it big. YOU’VE GOT TOO MUCH TO DO WITH YOUR JUNK THAT YOU CAN’T JUST GIVE IT ALL AWAY. (Not going to touch that sentence. Michael Scott can read it and make of it what he may.)

So! Here’s something you can do in order to prepare for Camping’s vaunted day. You see that car in your driveway? Or in your neighbor’s driveway? Whether it belongs to you, your parents, other relatives, or your neighbor, it is a vitally important resource in the event Aunt Fanny decides to reanimate and chase after you with antiquated clothing and a fork. You must therefore learn to drive and take care of it. A few tips follow.

1. Learn how to change a tire. Learn how to change a tire while your buddy covers you with a shotgun/baseball bat/pistol/bazooka/whatever. Learn how to change that tire with any and all distractions like doing it while wearing a skirt or having people scream at you or your infant brother needing a diaper change and pulling the dog’s tail. Zombies will not faze your mad skills with a jack once you master changing that tire under heavy stress.

Pro tip: you can get away with (temporarily) using four nuts instead of five on the wheel to save time. Just make sure and replace the fifth when you’re in a safe zone.

2. Learn how to drive stick shift. Let’s be honest – zombie apocalypse means chaos and in the chaos means looting and scrambling around for safety, resources, and escape. You must be able to drive any type of vehicle. “But this is the 21st century!” I hear you say. “It’s all automatic transmissions!” Bupkis, my friend! When you’re in a hurry, you need whatever is available, and stick shifts are not uncommon. And that brings me to…

3. Learn how to hotwire a car. Let me just pause here and say, I DO NOT CONDONE CAR THEFT OR ANY ILLEGAL ABUSE OF THIS TIP. That said, I will remind you of tip 2: you need whatever mode of transport is immediately accessible, even those locked cars.

Pro tip: also learn how to use a slim jim, purchase, and conceal one about your person at all times. Same warning as before about not condoning illegal activity. Besides, you do not want a busted window in the zombie apocalypse.

4. Learn how to make basic repairs to your vehicle. Expanding upon number 3, the simplest of problems in your car can be deadly when you’re stuck in a dangerous place. Learn how to check/change oil, fill radiators, the basic layout, etc. (This is one I can’t really elaborate on due to my own inexperience. So while I learn, I’d encourage you to do the same.)

5. Learn how to drive in all types of weather and prepare for all incidents. The driving school I attended taught how to operate a vehicle in the event of a tire blowout, the engine stalling, fishtailing on ice, slipping off the road, etc. Get this training. Know your strengths and weaknesses while driving your vehicle. If you’re bad at puttering around on ice, practice. Your brains will thank you for their uneaten status later as you outrun zombie Santa on the icy streets of New York come October 22.

Pro tip: if you can, learn how to drive and fire a gun out the window at the same time. Once again, I assume no liability, nor do I condone unsafe conditions that may occur from someone trying this.

6. Learn to drive without looking out your back windows. If you’re going to be driving a truck or minivan filled to the brim with supplies and whatnot, your view will most likely be blocked with forty crates of bottled water and ramen in the back. Make good use of your side mirrors and purchase some rounded ones for extra visibility.

These are only a few excellent lessons to learn. And yes, I can hear you now, “But Warriorbard, where am I going to learn these things?” Well besides going out and talking to your dad, mum, militant uncle, redneck cousins, the mechanic down the street, or any other knowledgeable source, there are websites out there that fill you in such as WikiHow. For you StumbleUpon users, add “Survivalist” and “Self Improvement” to your interests and click away.

Any more tips about you and your car in the zombie apocalypse? There be the comment button and there be your mouse and keyboard. Fire away, friend.

Much as my lazy self would love to argue it, I believe that’s true. Genius starts with an idea and is brought to fruition through squalid living conditions, late nights of doing worthwhile things besides clicking on the Stumble! button, possessing enough consistency to look up a quote and not just the word squalid, and a day job you can tolerate in light of a genius end goal.

When you hit that glorious end goal, even tougher is to glow in its completion, retaining enough exultation upon completion to instill your witnesses with a sense of how much you enjoyed yourself working on the amazing achievement.

One of the main reasons I think Owl City is my favorite band (and believe me, it’s taken me forever to have a favorite band with my drifting from music genre to music genre) is because you listen to Adam Young sing his silly little songs with his electronic beeps, dlurs, and vorks, and all of a sudden you realize he’s having oodles of fun singing. Even when he’s melancholy.

Maybe it’s something in his voice. Maybe it’s the jaunty lilts of his synth. Maybe I need to get my ears cleaned. Whatever. Adam Young is not the only one I’ve noticed doing this.

David Tennant said playing the main character Doctor Who was a dream he hoped to achieve when he acting.  When he’s playing the doctor, pure glee enters his eye at every happy moment in an episode. A fierce focus transforms his face when he’s serious. Anger is not just anger for him; Tennant as the doctor exudes a sheer contradiction in raw, yet contained, fury.

Plus, I think he’s a bit touched. Anyone who’s seen his mental performance as Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire would start to  wonder if some of those cackles and tics were old habits dying hard.

Sometimes, realizing how much the artist enjoys his work takes longer for me. Writers tend to be mysteries (and no, I’m not giving myself too much credit or a cool persona). I personally find it hard to identify a writer’s voice. Maybe their enjoyment is not revealed there. Maybe the discovery of their enjoyment is spread out among their lives in addition to their work.

Neil Gaiman, who muscled up beside Terry Pratchett for the long battle with trench coats and broad swords on my favorite author pedestal, is subtle in expressing such enjoyment. It took me awhile to learn his enjoyment is expressed through taking advantage of rewriting reality: the plain, worn woman in the corner of the diner eating the heart of a fairy tale trickster (Harlequin Valentine), the under-towns and secret societies of forgotten people in Neverwhere, the mirror world of women with buttons for eyes and talking cats (Coraline).

A writer does not stop at writing. A writer experiences. Gaiman experiences well. He was called a pencil-necked weasel by a rabid republican and the subsequent rush of his fans to the revealing news website overloaded the server. He wields his celebrity in aid of causes that encourage kids to write comics and keep comics protected under the first amendment. He married a punk/goth/dark cabaret/what words do I use to describe her/giving up now rock chick who can sing softly with a ukulele and features wicked sexy eyebrows that might lean me toward the side of sporting facial tattoos if only I could play an instrument for Flatfoot 56.

“Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat.” (“Chivalry”) When you’re a writer, you must turn the world upside down in a way that makes the audience cock their head and murmur a reverent ooh like my sister did when she found out David Tennant would be considered for a role in The Hobbit. Gaiman turns the world upside down and ends his story with a flourish. The flourish is such that the story is no longer resting in his hands but the hands of your own imagination, the tale continuing in your own mind.

It is a state achieved only when you possess enough love for your craft. Inspiration produces joy through this.

One final example just coz I can:

I’m jealous of how in love with their music they are and don’t care if they look like idiots bobbing their heads in time.

MOVING ON WITH YOUR KIND INDULGENCE I scanned an article on the fourth son of Osama bin Laden (Omar) and how he’s thinking about suing the United States for his father’s death and incorrect (to say the least) burial at sea.

Welp, Omar, you might present a better picture of yourself without your drama and casual pictures.

Case in point:

I saw this and immediately I thought of the following meme (poor taste indignants beware).

Oh, wipe that outraged expression off your face. Can’t you just picture it?

You can even imagine the title and the five second commercial: “Omar bin Laden stars in “Life Without Father” on Tuesday Nights at 9 Central!”

Original Daily Mail article link below

http://tinyurl.com/6cx4rbu

Not a day goes by without some interneter looking for an original lolcat pic so she can add his own hilarious caption.

But seriously, folks, the internet is a ripe orchard in which any passerby can pluck a grainy picture of a guy in a gangsta hat from deviantArt and add a caption wildly inappropriate with the content.

For example (and a few personal favorites):

and

Then I read an article (via StumbleUpon) about Dillon Pearce who ran over some ducks in a fast-food restaurant parking lot.

Tell me this doesn't scream "MEME ME!"

At first glance, I felt a tingling sensation on the back of my neck. The sensation that comes with the drunken snigger of your best friend when you casually mention your kick-arse skills at air hockey. The sensation that breathes across your nape when you enter an online chatroom and someone starts talking about God and the trolls materialize.

The sensation of the metal gauntlet cast before Death in Kings Quest VI.

THE SENSATION OF A CHALLENGE!

And so it was that a few copy/pastes/meme references/font checks on Google/delusions of instant popularity later that I assembled a few badly constructed images for the consideration of all.

Enjoy my meme attempts below.

And send some love to the original site with the original article:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/04/28/2011-04-28_dillon_pearce_19_drove_hummer_over_flock_of_ducklings_in_mcdonalds_parking_lot_k.html?r=news/national

The sad rapper with the bloodhound eyes...get it?! DAWG?! AHAHAHA!

Not badly drawn. Just badly mistaken.

Wait a minute. His name isn't steve...

Please take care of me.

For a limited time only, this abandoned town comes with Neil Gaiman stairs.

This just in: Prime Minister David Cameron has lost the entire country of England while on a walk across the Himalayas.

Cookies, old women, and cats inside.

The full array of pictures along with the original article: http://planetoddity.com/abandoned-french-town-in-cambodia/

Meanwhile, Moscow was discovered in an unattended baby buggy on platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross Station…

My favorite ones to tell are the ol’ legless armless teehees. For example, what do you call a man with no arms and no legs in the bottom of a bucket?

Phil.

What do you call a man with no arms and no legs at the bottom of a hole?

Doug.

What do you call a man with no arms and no legs in an envelope?

Bill.

I’ve never told a dead baby joke. They teeter too much toward the Aristocrats for my particular brand o’ humor.

But in the category of “Oh-snap-I-am-so-going-to-hell-for-laughing-at-this,” I have to take my hat off to Ericyahnker.com which I stumbled across awhile back. Back when my StumbleUpon favorites were in the single digits. Yeah, that long ago.

Helen Keller Jokes. As Art Pieces. See You In Hell.

There are a few more if you feel your soul isn’t doomed enough: http://ericyahnker.com/html%27s/helen_keller_jokes.html

I wonder if Dante found the circle of hell I’m headed for.

If you’ve never read Brian Jacques and his tales of anthropomorphic animals, his books take place in a land of medieval wonder where mice and hedgehogs clash with weasels and ferrets, sword-fighting, feasting, and questing all over. Martin the Warrior was the greatest mouse who ever lived, possessing a sword forged from star-iron. He helped build and defend an abbey of peaceful animals until his death.

I wanted a sword. I wanted to be a mouse and defend an abbey where they had sumptuous feasts at the twitch of a whisker and wield a fantastic blade.

Years later, thanks to StumbleUpon and the rest of the internet, I have to revisit my dream again through the following:

After getting over the guilty laugh and the oh-that’s-horrible-and-hilarious sensation, I thought about it: how true is it that of a lot of the heroes we want to be had tragic pasts?

Batman – his parents were murdered in front of him.

Superman – his father abandoned him on a strange planet.

Spiderman – his uncle was killed because of a choice he made.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – they’re genetic mutations and they’re gonna have major identity issues at some point.

Green Hornet – wasted half of his life and his dad was murdered.

Wolverine – immortal on planet earth; seen too much and been through worse.

Luke Skywalker – parents corrupt (well, one is; the other gave up a career just to play across from that idiot Hayden Christensen); guardians/mentor murdered (within hours from each other, though grieving took seconds); kisses sister (oops)

Martin the Warrior – Lost his one and only love.

In the end,it’s like history. You get taught the kosher version in elementary school where you dress up like Native Americans and learn the earth chants. Then in Middle School you find out your country fought against them in a couple of wars. Then in High School you find out they were driven to near genocide by settler incursion. College comes with numbers and horrific first-hand accounts.

It never really hits you until later that Bruce Wayne lost his parents. Mum and Dad are still here for me. And I haven’t found my true love yet. I will never be Gotham’s Protector or Martin the Warrior.

My Mum’s scones are better than a cool cape, anyway.

2. People often take drugs to aid their production of it, but just as often take drugs to stem the tide of lyrical inspiration.

3. It is often produced to the accompaniment of rhythm, deep or shrill, or a new musical expression with no meter whatsoever.

4. Some the greatest producers of it have been criticized as being “full of beans.”

5. It is natural.

Isn’t that music great?

Then StumbleUpon brought me the following and now I turn to my bed again, the answer beaming rays of soothing calm across my fevered brain.

Yes. Many girlfriends. Why did I even wonder?