deserting

I got a new computer. It is a Windows machine. I'm still getting used to it, and I suspect I'll keep getting used to it for a good long while. It feels rather completely different from the old laptop, and I keep making typing mistakes, but I'm sure it will come to feel like home. As soon as I can wrangle something with which to make graphics, I will do so.

I killed the first zombie.

I might have saved the world. Or I might have just killed a man. Either way I want to write this fast because something may be coming. I was driving to go pick up an air mattress for the trip this weekend and I swear I saw the first zombie. A man shambling toward the gas station with his neck at a broken angle, dragging one leg and foaming at the mouth. He was headed for the minivan parked at the far pump. I slowed the car down to see what was wrong with the guy, and he turned his head around and sniffed for a second. His eyes were black, with some kind of red skin irritation all around them. He was moving toward the van, and the van had kids in it.

I know zombies aren't real. But I know that if they were real, they'd look like this guy, and if he bit even one person it would be over. It would spread like it does in all the movies, and we would just have to find out whether this one has a happy ending where only 99% of the population dies, or if this is it. I can't say whether what I did was sane. I just know that I would rather risk my own insanity and incarceration than risk the lives of every person in the western hemisphere.

I killed him. I stopped my car in the middle of the lane and I grabbed a golf club from my bag in the trunk. I ran into the gas station lot and while the two other people standing by the pumps started to scream, I bashed the zombie's head in. I caved in his skull, and I scattered bits of zombie brain all over the club, the pavement, my face. I didn't get any in my eyes. I was careful.

The people were screaming, and I could see the guy in the gas station looking out at me and dialing something on his phone. I ran back to the car, covered the license plate with my shirt, closed the trunk on it, and drove home. I checked the news for any stories that sounded like a zombie infection, but nothing has come up. Whether it was a virus or black magic that made the first zombie, I think I stopped it.

I don't know what to do, and I don't know how long I have until the police find me and put me away for murder. Maybe they won't. I don't know how it works, or how many cameras or how many witnesses there were. Obviously putting this online might not be the best idea, but I want you all to know what happened if I disappear, and I want you all to be on the lookout in case the one I got wasn't the first, or wasn't the last.

I killed the first zombie. I might have saved us all. I might never sleep well again.

hamfists. Fists of ham. Pheasantfists. Fists of absolute nonsense.

Good morning fiends and bestiaries. I am once again in Atlanta, this time to receive money instead of spending it. We did a flawless show at Georgia Perimeter College, and are getting fully paid not only for the show, but also for the transportation costs there and back again, the rental car, all the fuel, the hotel, and all our other expenses. Our clients are flying us across the country. We're making it.

I also got to catch up and hang out with most of my old Atlanta friendfolks in the wee hours of this morning, roving from a four-tiered Irish pub to the basement apartment of Admiral Nicholas Turbo Benson and Victor B. Bicycle. Bless their hearts, one and all. There's a part of me that is uniquely Atlantan. And it's been a while.

I still don't have a real computer. This is being written in the glamorous environs of the Sheraton Atlanta hotel lounge, and up in Boston, 1300 miles away, I still have the darling little piece of shit that Wildfire Chad is lending me. I ran a time test for it- I measured the time it takes the laptop to open Firefox against the time than it takes our toaster oven to toast a bagel. The laptop won this contest by exactly twelve seconds. Truly technology is amazing. Truly I miss having Photoshop to draw some poorly-conceived ostrich-hammock to accompany this post.

How the words Ostrich and Hammock might possibly interact is something I'll leave up to your sultry little wonderminds. Release ballast, Mr. Hannibal! We float easterly!