Standard Question: “What did you get for Christmas?”
Awesome Answer: “A Kindle and a machete.”

For the past two years, my mother has given me electronic things that I didn’t ask for but ended up loving.  Last year, it was a Wii.  There’s some formula used by shopaholics to determine the price of an item versus its worth based on how many times it’s used.  If that’s the case with the Wii, it’s probably paid for itself at least 3 times over by now.  I never knew I wanted one until I got it.

As for the Kindle, I’ve always been suspicious of them.  I believe in reading (and touching, and smelling) real books, and any electronic reading device seemed like a subversive tactic to kill publishing and make the future literature-starved mobs loot my personal stash of books.  BUT I think I really like the Kindle, mostly because the screen doesn’t look like a screen, it looks like a page.  There are a few things I don’t like (having to click through for footnotes, not being able to know actual page numbers), but for the stuff I burn through in a day or two, the price of the electronic versions more than makes up for the extra block of matter I’ll have to pack up and move someday.

Also, I got a machete.  To explain:

A few years ago, some friends and I were in a bar when I mentioned a zombie nightmare I’d recently had.  It was the one that so scared me, I wound up sitting on my toilet (in real life) at 2:30am for like 15 minutes, frozen in place because I was sure the zombie apocalypse had begun and they would see me moving around in my apartment.  Ahem, I live on the second floor and my bathroom window is in no way visible to anyone on the street.

I brought up this story, and it sparked a two hour debate on the zombie apocalypse and survival tactics.  We agreed that because Jake’s house was nearby and included a) a blow-up-able staircase, b) guns, and c) access points that do not necessarily include heavily-trafficked roads, we would meet there.  I can reach Jake’s in 8 minutes on foot without having to travel on regular streets (my best option is the railroad tracks, so if I come across any zombies at all, they’re likely to be of the hobo or teenage graffiti punk variety).  Also, at the time, my previous survival plan included a Sports Authority in an inner-ring suburb, although I knew this plan was seriously flawed, not least of all because it included my ex-boyfriend and his friend who hated me, plus both of them are morons.

ANYWAY.  Since then, our group of friends has become very invested in our survival of the zombie apocalypse.  We’re aware that it sounds bizarre to outsiders, but you have to remember that we’ve been friends since elementary school, and if something happens because someone makes a bad decision, the rest of us are going to tell that person’s parents (assuming they are still alive).  And WHATEVER ANYWAY, because we’re prepared and you might not be and see if we let you into our zombie fortress.

So when I arrived at Adrian and Angelica’s tonight and Jake handed me a long, flat object in wrapping paper, my first question was “Is it a machete?!?!”

I may not know how to fire a gun, but I’ve got a big fucking knife now.  I know how to use it, too.  I have strong forearms, motherfucker!  I WILL END YOU!  Bring it, zombies.  Bring it.

To get to Adrian and Angelica’s tonight, I had to take a nap and suck down a pot of coffee.  We went to Graham’s mom’s for lunch today, which required us to wake up at 7:00am in order to prep our food and be there by ten.  His mom lives in St. Clair, a far exurb that’s like an hour away from St. Louis in Franklin County, which some of you non-St. Louisans might now as Meth Capital, USA.  Not a terribly long drive but a drive nonetheless, and one that requires me to wake up early on the second day in a row of my 7-day vacation.

Unlike Graham (who had to work afterwards), I had the luxury of taking a nap once we got home.  I curled up in bed with my Kindle (as much as I like it, though, I think it’s sort of blasphemous to go to bed with it, so I’ll have to stick to real books in the bedroom from now on…unless there’s cheap erotica to be had on Kindle, in which case, giddyup) and slept until 10pm.  Then I woke up, drank some coffee, and grabbed some beer to take to my friends’ house.

It’s been snowing in St. Louis, and while the roads are reasonable, it stopped snowing long enough and temperatures dropped far enough that ice began to form.  I didn’t see this ice as I walked between houses to my car, which is why I make a sound like “BLLERRRRGGH!” and dropped to one knee on the sidewalk.  If I were 16 and Russian I’d have done the splits; seeing as though I’m actually American and nearly 30, I pulled my groin, took a hard knee, and somehow avoided crushing the bottles in my 6-pack.  I was not drunk at the time.  Like I said, I’d just had a nap and had coffee.  I’m just that problematic at things like walking.  My knee is a bit drunk-numbed at the moment, but I’ve got an ugly strawberry on it and considering that I played 20 years of soccer, had 7 years of growth spurts, and possess the genetic instability of a gangly person, my knees are already destroyed.  This shit is gonna be gross tomorrow.

Luckily, though, this kind of thing will no longer slow me down in the event of a zombie apocalypse.  Thanks to Jake and my big fucking knife.

(Updated since I wrote this last night: I had a zombie apocalypse dream last night, and I used my machete in the dream!  If my dream was any indication, I should probably rig a strap around my hand to give me more confidence while swinging the machete at zombie heads.  Also, the hardest zombie to kill – and the one with the bloodiest brains – will be Huey Lewis.)