What is it with zombies?

I’m not talking about cocktails.

I’m talking about the horror movie monsters.

Now, it should be noted that I don’t know much about zombies. I have a horror of horror movies. I will only watch one if an actor I particularly like has needed a job badly enough to do a horror movie.

I know they’re called the Undead. I’ve heard they eat brains. (Really? And we like this?) I know that they are reanimated corpses. (Ugh.)

I did once see From the Dead of Night (because I like Lindsay Wagner). It didn’t shed any light on our pop culture fascination with zombies. It wasn’t even that scary. I mean, I was able to turn the light off that night and go to bed without any hesitation.

Maybe they weren’t very good zombies?

I don’t know. But I am wondering today about why zombies have become so popular. Surely, someone has done a study on this phenomenon? Is it our fear of death manifesting in another, albeit creepier, vision of an afterlife? Is it some metaphor of a civilization gone numb and “dead” and controlled by outside forces (Facebook?).

It’s undoubtedly a current craze. Witness this infographic that made the rounds in 2009, “How to Write for the American Theater.” Matt Slaybaugh’s tongue-in-cheek flow chart does give prominent place to zombies.

What is it with zombies? Does anybody know?

Owl Schedules

No, I’m not talking about Harry Potter.

I’m wondering about owls. Can they tell time? Has anybody ever studied this?

I can’t find anything on Google, but we have an owl that’s been coming around for the past few weeks and, honestly, she has been arriving at almost exactly the same time every evening.

Now, why is that?

Okay, so she lives in the neighborhood. Why shouldn’t she come around?

No reason at all. I would expect her to hunt around in the yards of the houses surrounding wherever she has her nest. I’d even expect that she might come nightly. What I don’t expect is that she lights in that same tree every night at 7:42 pm.

Is she punching a time clock? Do her eyes register some specific shift in light that indicates it is time to begin her appointed rounds? And are they such creatures of habit that she travels the same exact route every night? Two minutes to fly from the oak down the street to the pine tree next door. Another 20 seconds to flit to the top of the sweetgum tree.

Maybe.

But even if the route is identical night after night, doesn’t a mouse or a mole ever appear? You’d think there’d be some variation in the schedule to allow for hunting.

I haven’t seen her for a few nights, but for a while there, we could have set the clock by her.

I’m just wondering why that was.

Ho, ho, ho

Just like a Yo-Yo.

I’m wondering where my Duncan Yo-Yo is. I bet my mother gave it away. Mother’s do things like that. They want to have room in their houses for their own stuff after decades of raising you. They have a little bit of sentimentality for the Barbie doll clothes your grandmother made and for those plaster handprints, but yo-yos don’t usually make the cut. There are garage sales and thrift stores and church bazaars, and suddenly your prized possessions–that you haven’t thought about in years–are gone.

Remember Duncan Yo-Yos?

I can’t even remember what grade it was, but every kid had one. We learned the Sleeper, Walked the Dog, and went Around the World. Surprisingly, we were very rarely hit in the head by some other kid’s errant spinner. Teachers, on the other hand, had drawers full of confiscated yo-yos.

It was fun.

I daresay we had more of a sense of accomplishment the first time the Butterfly came back to hand than any Temple Runner sliding under an arch. Maybe not. I’m terrible at Temple Run. My nephew sits by me coaching, “Jump! Turn! Slide, Aunt E, slide!” and still I lose. So, for all I know, the satisfaction might be as great. I’d have to actually have some small success at Temple Run to have any real basis for comparison. I’m just guessing, based on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi‘s theories of Flow and the idea that there has to be some hope of achieving the goal in order to really enjoy an endeavor.

Yo-yos offered that. We could practice, and we could get better at it. The improvement was noticeable–both to us and to our peers. In other words, we could show off!

Yo-yos had style. There was color and movement–and just a hint of danger. A person could get hit in the head by a flying yo-yo, and our yo-yo practice was usually done to accompanying cries of “Not in the house!” But it was just a hint. This study, in fact, shows that in a ten year period from 1993 to 2002 there were only 14 cases of yo-yo related injuries, and they were all minor.

Of course, 1993 to 2002 was not the heyday of yo-yos. (Oh, felicitous phrase!) The heyday was back in my giddy youth, almost forgotten. The only reason I remembered it now, was because of Hiroyuki Suzuki and this:

I wonder where my Duncan yo-yo is.

It matters how you finish

Try again – “Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.“*

Instead of wondering on this Wondering Wednesday, I’m going to show you a Wonder. Check out this video of motivational speaker, Nick Vujicic.

How many of us get a rejection letter and give up?

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated failures. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.“– Calvin Coolidge

Maybe you want to get that play or novel out of the drawer and try again?

Patches of quicksand. . .

. . .and some mines in the field.*

This is already shaping up to be a weird post.

I haven’t really lost my mind. I think. It’s just that I was wasting time yesterday (such an unusual occurrence!) by surfing the ‘net, and I came across this strange “fact.” I started to wonder how anyone knew it to be a fact, and why it was a fact, and of course, my next thought was: Wondering Wednesdays!

Ergo, I’ve been wondering about this oddball thing ever since.

What was the “fact?” you ask.

Well. . ..here goes. . .but don’t hold it against me if you find yourselves wondering about this, too, and then wondering why.

The “fact” is as follows:

A donkey will sink in quicksand,but a mule will not.

Now, seriously–who comes up with this stuff? Is this a phenomenon somebody has actually observed? Have there been controlled experiments? Are there people out there dumping hapless donkeys and mules into quicksand?

And doesn’t the SPCA frown on that sort of thing?

Setting aside the question of how this piece of esoterica came to be discovered, aren’t you wondering why it should be the case? Are mules naturally more buoyant than donkeys? Really? Are they smarter? I mean, is it possible that a donkey–having fallen into a pit of quicksand–will thrash around wildly and sink deeper and deeper while a mule–in the same predicament–is smart enough to be still and slowly extricate itself?

I’ve known a couple of donkeys and mules in my life–the four-legged kind–don’t get me started on the number of two-legged specimens I’ve known–and I am fairly comfortable with the statement that mules are not smarter than donkeys. They’re not dumber, either, as far as I can tell. I’d say the IQs are probably within a few points of each other.

I am not swearing to it that this is a fact. I have no quantitative knowledge of the relative intelligence of the various members of the horse family, the Equidae. (But isn’t “Equidae” a kind of cool word?)

I also make no comment on thinking whoever came up with this donkey/mule/quicksand item might have been similarly circumspect,and perhaps–just perhaps–not have made this kind of categorical and, apparently unfounded, statement without providing just a little more background and context for it.

I will say that I now have valuable information about what to do if I ever fall into a pit of quicksand, and I hereby pass it on to you–just so the day won’t be a total waste. Click here to read some instructions and see a video. I can also reassure you that your chances of falling into said pit are probably not high in spite of its prevalence in every jungle movie I’ve ever seen as a child. So, no need to wonder about that.

What is worth a little wondering is the quote I came up with for a headline today:

“Retirement can be a bit of a wonderland. But there are some patches of quicksand and some mines in the field.“*

I think that’s patently true–because I’ve “retired” from my money job, and I’m supposed to be writing, and here I am wondering about donkeys in quicksand. If that’s not a mine in the field, I don’t know what is.

* Ken Dychtwald

The limits of learned behavior

Don’t be a squirrel

Why is it that squirrels can outwit every mechanism to protect a birdfeeder devised by man… (Don’t believe that? Watch this.)…but persist in waiting until just the last minute to run across the road in front of a car?

I refuse to believe the Geico ad that suggests it is purposeful mischief. (Word is the gecko’s union is contemplating a job action over the use of unorganized squirrel labor in this commercial. When the inflatable rat goes up at the next camera location, the menagerie will be complete.)

Apparently, there are limits to a squirrel’s ingenuity. Those crafty little brains haven’t learned to judge speed and direction of a moving vehicle–or that there are consequences for misjudging it. Dire consequences. I guess they hear the engine or feel the vibration, and the alarm bell goes off in their heads. So, they dash right out into danger.

They don’t learn from their mistakes, I suppose, because the mistake is fatal. Maybe their companions learn. There are always companions. Like sorrows, squirrels ‘come not single spies but in battalions.* Maybe the companions learn, but I doubt it. The next time Buddy Squirrel hears a car coming he probably doesn’t think, “Uh-oh, better not run across the road! Remember what happened to Chester!”

I guess he could. One squirrel looks much like another to me, so maybe Buddy runs the other way. However, there are always squirrels dashing across the street in front of my car, and I am always hitting the brakes, so I don’t think they are grasping the concept.

The running is a survival mechanism. It stands them in good stead most of the time. It’s just not working for them in traffic.

Today, I am wondering what survival mechanism aren’t working for me, anymore. What learned behaviors–learned so early that I think they are just part of my personality–are getting in the way of my success?

I’ll tell you one that most women of my age–and maybe any age–have to fight against. The ‘Be a Good Girl and You Will Be Rewarded’ myth. Tricky, that. Because certain aspects of “being a good girl” are helpful. It’s not always bad to be polite, to be accommodating, to use gentleness instead of force.

Sometimes, it’s not enough, though.

Sometimes, you have to have another club in your bag. And sometimes you have to club somebody with it.

Metaphorically speaking. Do not run out and hit anybody with a 5 iron!

I’m not advocating violence–or non-violence. I’m just saying, if you’re not making the progress you want to make, it might be helpful to look for the patterns. Wonder about the things that you are doing ‘instinctively’ and see if you can change them.

In other words, quit dashiing out in front of cars!

* Shakespeare! Hamlet, Act IV, Sc. 5

Where have all the book sales gone…

Wondering Wednesdays

Wondering Wednesdays is a new feature I’m introducing here at the blog. Monday Miracles, Tuesday Tips and Thankful Thursdays having been so helpful in providing a little structure for coming up with ideas. With a Friday Finding appearing last week, it seemed like Wednesday could have a theme, too.

I started out thinking it might be Wednesday’s Woes (and we may detour into that some weeks), but it seemed a little less woeful to devote this post to things about which I am wondering.

This Wednesday, I am wondering about book sales.

When I was a kid, I loved my school fair every year. It wasn’t the rides or the goldfish toss or the occasional celebrity appearance by Batman.

It was the book sale.

Tables and tables of used books set out in the cafeteria at five for a quarter or something insane like that.

I would spend hours looking through them, and then I would buy armloads.

And I am wondering what is going to happen to used book sales now that we are all transitioning to Kindles and iPads and Nooks and eReaders of all shapes and descriptions?

In the last few years, I have noticed fewer and fewer shelves of books at flea markets and street fairs. Thrift stores still have them. The library periodically (no pun intended) does a fundraiser of a book sale.

Aren’t they going to run out of material? Won’t books–actual hard copy books–known rather snidely these days as “dead tree books”–become so rare that they will no longer be available at a quarter apiece? Will those terrifically musty, dusty stores–where you take in a stack of old paperbacks and get store credit of one-fourth the cover price to be applied to new stacks of old paperbacks you can purchase at one-half the cover price–will they just disappear from lack of product to sell? What about the “Take One, Leave One” shelves at marinas all up and down the Intercoastal Waterway?

I like my Kindle. It sure makes it easier to travel with plenty of reading material. Mine uses eInk and no back-light, and it is easy on the eyes. I really like it.

But I can’t read it in the bathtub without worrying about dropping it, I can’t lend a book to a friend, I can’t sell those I’ve finished at a yard sale, and I will never be thrilled to discover the one Mr. & Mrs. North murder mystery I don’t own in a cardboard box in the back of garage.

Win something, lose something.

I’m wondering if we are ahead.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants