regarding: The New Year...

If I only take one shower this year -- the one I just took is one for the ages.
I was thorough in there, brothers and sisters.
I scrubbed my body down something fierce.
The soap was shea-buttered...the shampoo almost completely natural, and scented with the essence of rose.
Shit -- I even conditioned my half-inch hair before rinsing off and toweling dry.

I washed 2011 completely away, I think. And it was lovely. REFRESHING.

Though I don't normally view anything in long-term increments, the year of our lord, 2011, was a big one. At least, I think it was. I guess it was.

Now we've arrived here at 2012.

This is the year the Mayans warned us about. Something is coming, come late December. It may just be 'The End Of Days.'

In a recent poll, 58% of Americans reported that if the Mayans are right -- they expect that the culmination of the destruction of mankind will be due to a...
...wait for it...

a ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE.

I'm serious. People actually said that.

Now -- I'm not sure who conducted this poll, or who their sampling frame consisted of, but if their results tell us anything, it's this:
Humans are resilient.

And who wouldn't hope for a zombie apocalypse, when you view the issue at hand with objectivity?
A zombie apocalypse, really, beats the hell out of worldwide famine and starvation, epidemics and pandemics that paramedics cannot manage, nuclear destruction leading to toxic radiation poisoning of everything with a pulse or a root, carbon levels in the atmosphere magnifying ultraviolet rays to melt the ice caps and boil the oceans 'til the seas rise up and wash us all away...

The grim list of, what are likely to be more accurate possibilities for potential apocalypse, goes on and on and on.

With a zombie apocalypse, however -- we'd at least have the chance to go down fighting.

As best as we can understand -- zombies mainly have real power due to their numbers.
They're notoriously slow and clumsy...so in a one-on-one fight, they do not have much advantage over a healthy human being.
If you can strike them or blast them in the head -- they go down. And they go down hard.

I'm a peace junkie, myself.

I've been in some violent situations in my day...mainly hand-to-hand combat scenarios -- and I didn't enjoy them any...and nor did I fare too well in them.

I learned this much, regarding physical violence: whether you win or lose, you don't really solve much when you try to solve something with violence.
You end up bruised and scraped and scratched and sore...and typically more angry and confused about the conflict that you were trying to fix.

That said -- I do possess...and we probably all do...an inherent instinct inside of me that tells me...if I truly HAD to...if my own life, or the life of a loved one depended on it...I could certainly KILL.
I'm not saying that it's a desire of mine...but if the situation called for it...I'm sure that I could do it, and do it well.

However -- I'd feel bad about killing another human being.

But...I do think that I might be able to learn to feel pretty good about killing zombies.

I picture myself dirty and scuffed and sweaty and HARD and cold -- toting a semi-automatic M14 assault rifle, and firing hollow point shells into the craniums of the unholy-undead...and in this visualization, I'm filled with ecstatic, murderous rage, bordering on hysterical joy, in knowing that I'm fulfilling a VERY important role with every spent, smoking shell, for my own self-preservation and the preservation of the lives around me -- the good lives...the living ones...the human lives.

We'd all be in it together, fighting in unison, in a zombie apocalypse.

Wouldn't it be nice to all have a REAL common enemy?

I'm not talking about terrorists or Wall Street or activists or the police or the Iranians or the Christians or the Muslims or the Jews or the teachers or NPR or the ACLU or the Tea Party or the bleeding-heart liberals or the gays or the straights or the Congressman or the Senate or the homeless or the credit-lenders or the communists or the women or the blacks or the lepers or the cripples or the Taliban or the cartels or the immigrants, or Obama or Bachmann, or that sleazeball Mitt Romney, or that nutjob Ron Paul.

I'm not talking about the 1% or the other 99%.

I'm talking about the fucking zombies here.

And I'm talking about the ONE HUNDRED PERCENT -- of ALL of us...in all of our imperfect perfection...united and allied and together at last...kicking that filthy zombie ass all up and down the Main Streets and highways and bi-ways of the towns that we call home.
The HUMAN towns.
OUR towns.
Anyplace, USA...and Anyplace, Planet Earth.

There ain't no room for zombies in the land of the living.
I know that much.

But there is room for all of the rest of us.
Or at least -- there certainly should be.

Maybe that's what the poll is getting at.

Maybe somewhere deep down, in our heart-of-hearts -- that's truly what people want:

An imaginary foe, so as that we can all stop fighting amongst ourselves, in the face of more real and troubling issues that, if left untreated and unchecked, could actually lead us on a road to premature destruction.

Zombies are a catalyst, perhaps -- but in the likely chance that the Mayans are wrong, and that the dead don't rise from their graves like so many unwelcome Anti-Christs, intent on splitting our skulls and devouring our brains...come hell or high water...well -- what then?

What catalyst then?

Surely one exists beyond our own imaginations.

Have a safe and happy New Year, brothers and sisters.

And always remember...

It is our resilience that makes us great -- we humans are good in a crisis...and there's something to be said for that.

But beyond our drive for unflappability -- it's our capacity for conscious love that makes us truly special.

Real love is life recognizing life...and choosing not to destroy it.

We all look better scrubbed clean and soft without scratches or scrapes.

And that's just how I am right now.

2011 is washed down the drain.

I'm clean as a whistle now, ready for anything that comes down the pike here in ol' 2012.

I put on my clean clothes, and I hope that the righteous shower I just took was one of many more to come in the coming year...