Week of the Living Dead

From the Evansville Courier & Press and the Meade County Messenger

By Jacob Bennett

I should have known this would happen as soon as that zombie bit me.
My head hurts, my nose is stuffed up and I'm coughing like a newbie at the Moontower.

It's tough to be in a good mood when you've felt like a zombie all week. Nothing is fun. I don't feel like playing with my dog, I don't like talking to the wife, I don't feel like bringing news to the good people of Evansville (no offense).

I just want to wander the fields, biting those who come too close.

Even Dr. Kevorkian is powerless when you're undead. I never can figure out the right time to go to the doctor anyway. When I call right away, it turns out to be nothing. When I wait awhile, it turns out that I was actually dead and re-animated.

This time, I waited.

And all week I've been so congested that I sound like Rudolph when Donder makes him wear that dirt ball on his nose.

I'm just sick enough that I don't want to move but just busy enough that I can't call in. Which means that if I accidentally bite my co-workers, they'll all be infected.

I haven't even had the energy to rock. Even when the wife made me go to the Sugarland concert on Sunday, I was so blah that the only thing made it bearable was dirty thoughts of Jennifer Nettles and the drunk girls behind me.

They played that song they did with Bon Jovi, "Who Says You Can't Go Home," to which I mentally replied, "the wife."

Speaking of Bon Jovi, I wonder when you're a doctor and you're driving around in your Porsche, if it's bad form to jam "Bad Medicine."

On days off I like to watch TV shows, but in my condition, even "Who's The Boss?" isn't as funny.

So I tried movies, but "Shaun of the Dead" hits too close to home.

Lumbergh's not gonna like it, but I'm cutting this short. I've got some twitching to do.

And, if I'm lucky, some brains to eat.

It's close to midnight and columnist Jacob Bennett is lurking in the dark.Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart. You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com. You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes--you're paralyzed.

Shuffling Through Another Year

Life is like an iPod on shuffle: You should just be enjoying what's on now, but it's more exciting to wonder what's next.

But at least the end of the year gives you a chance to rewind. This year has seemed as depressing as a Cure song, what with the rest of the world hating us and all. But this year hasn't been all bad, according to the recap I looked at on wikipedia while I was uploading songs to the iPod I got for Christmas.

One of the things I learned was that in February the iPod store passed a million sales, which means I got into the whole phenomenon way late, like a poor guy in 1992 who bought Hammer pants. The only thing lamer would have been getting a Zune.

But I need every song ever recorded by my side so that next year, when I can’t decide what CDs to bring on the drive to work, I won’t just automatically grab Aerosmith (even though, when I put the iPod on shuffle, it always plays five Aerosmith songs in a row). Also, I want to make sure the next time I’m in Alabama, I don’t forget Hank Jr.

Anyhoo, other good news from ‘06: In March, Americans gave Oscars to movies about racism (“Crash”) and gay love “Brokeback Mountain”), although I think they should take away Ang Lee's best director award as punishment for what he did to the Hulk.

On March 17 the United States retired the last two battleships used in the world. I think that law was called D-7.

Get it?

Nothing good happened in April and May. On June 25, Warren Buffett donated $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In other news, on June 26, I started the Jacob Bennett Foundation.

You just never knew what was gonna come next, like when your iPod follows Ray Stevens' "I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow" with James Brown's "Payback." Speaking of which, God rest the Godfather of Soul's soul.

In September, Steve Irwin, a man famous for taking crocodiles’ lunch money, was taken out by a fish. In November, a preacher who campaigned against gay marriage stepped down over his relationship with a dude prostitute.

But his fall came at a good time: In December, America learned forgiveness when Donald Trump forgave Miss USA Tara Connor for underage drinking and re-enacting "Brokeback Mountain" with Miss Teen USA.

Personally, I don't forgive Tara, mostly because nobody caught her on camera. I sure did look though. Even on wikipedia, which is like the devil’s maze. I went from the 2006 recap to a page about Gerald Ford, which mentioned the old "Saturday Night Live" sketch where Dana Carvey impersonates Tom Brokaw delivering the news that "President Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves," which led me to a page about infamous "SNL" moments to a page about Andy Kaufman to a page about Michael Richards.

Hmm. Michael Richards. I haven't heard that name in forever. I wonder what's he's been up to.
Maybe in some cases, it isn’t so bad listening to the same old song and dance.

How much do I love thee? Let me count to googleplex

From the Evansville Courier & Press and the Meade County Messenger

Dig if you will this workplace: Swimming pools, free health food in the cafeteria, barbershop and doctors' offices, pets allowed.

Wait, come back, you can touch up your resume in a minute.

First let's talk about the "Googleplex," California headquarters of the Internet search engine Google, which is to Yahoo! what Macs are to PCs.

(Everyone says Google is the best search engine in the world, but there's a big secret: every time I search for the same keywords on Google and Yahoo!, I get the exact same results.)

I googled the Google headquarters after I saw it on "Oprah" the other day. Not only is the "Googleplex" the coolest name for a place since I dubbed my college dorm the Love Shack, there are a googleplex of reasons why it'd be a great place to work.

You can shoot pool. You can do your laundry. You can play video games. You can play foosball, the most realistic soccer simulation ever.

They have a baby grand piano. They play roller hockey twice a week in the parking lot, "Clerks"-style.

To think I was blown away by the break rooms at my first jobs at Revco and McDonalds. And 10-minute breaks were the best things since chocolate shakes.

When I used to help Dad cut tobacco, I was just grateful he had a jug of water.

A lot of company executives are reaching out to make life easier for their workers--flexible schedules, day cares, not bankrupting employee retirement accounts and then moving to Tahiti--and it's about time. I'd say most people spend the majority of their time at work, on their way to work or getting ready for work.

I've always thought the French work schedule was as seductive as French guys try to be--a maximum 35-hour work week, at least five weeks of vacation every year, and a dozen or so public holidays, according to Websites I found on Google (and Yahoo!).

In America, most companies that give paid holidays have between five and seven days a year, and most of those are between November and January (one of Martin Luther King's underappreciated accomplishments is being the only guy born in January to get his birthday celebrated so close to Christmas).

If anything, Google might be taking their perks a little too far. I love my dog, but if I took her to work there, she would bark at everyone who walked by and beg them for their free food.
I'm happy with my company's free Coke days, and they have nurses come check us out regularly. We've even got a shower here, but the idea of using it kind of weirds me out.

At a previous job a couple of years ago, I worked with a woman who had interviewed at the Courier & Press, and she was still taken with the employee exercise room downstairs.
I also think that room is cool. I plan to try it out one day.

But there is one extra way Google rules: I'm sure for employees there, spending all day surfing the Internet is encouraged.

Columnist Jacob Bennett knows what he's been told at jacobmbennett@hotmail.com, you've got to work to feed your soul. But he can't do this all on his own. He knows he's no Superman.

Rise and Shine of the Machines

The times they are a-changing, and our lives might hang in the balance.

That might be a little dramatic, but don’t bet on it. This year, daylight-saving time is starting three weeks earlier than normal, on March 11, and will end a week later than normal, after Halloween.

I never really did understand the concept of daylight-saving time, but I hear the change is a good thing: We’ll use less light in the evening, it’ll be brighter when kids are trick-or-treating, people will have something to complain about.

But there is one possible downer: The timing glitch may interfere with the world’s computer calendars, possibly making people late for appointments, and--worst-case--allowing machines to become self-aware, rise up and wage thermonuclear war on mankind.

Sound familiar? It’s the same thing everyone thought would happen on Dec. 31, 1999, when the clock ticked over to midnight. Because computers read the date as “’99” instead of “1999,” people were afraid when it ticked over to “’00” the machines would think it was 1900, and all mankind’s impressive advancements would instantly regress into butter churns.

The sky was gonna fall, and everyone took the precautionary measures the experts were advising: They loaded up their pantries with baked beans, bottled water and Spam.
Which makes you wonder, with the distance of time: Why was Y2K the one alarm everybody listened to?

I mean, noboby listens to anything else anybody warns about.

Too much pollution going to bake the world? Liberal hoax. Smoking going to wreck your lungs? We all gotta die somehow. Weak levees won’t be able to protect our coolest Gulf Coast city from even a minimal hurricane? Hurricane—that’s my favorite drink!

I’m sure there’s a good psychological reason for that—there’s some things we think we understand, like tobacco and the weather, and other things we don’t understand, like computers, and the Gremlins inside them.

But I don’t really care about all that psychobabble. What I propose is, somebody build a time machine so we can send Arnold Schwarzenegger back to 1998 to warn us that we’re about to look ridiculous. And to tell me to cut that mullet.

The only good think that came out of Y2K was Chris Jericho getting to call himself Y2J. That was awesome. The jury’s still out on this new daylight savings time, although one strike against it is that it’s going to be bright out when you’re trick-or-treating. Which means if you’re dressed if as a vampire, that’s one less hour you’re allowed to come out.

And who knows what it will do to our computers? The experts say it won’t be too bad, except maybe your TiVo forgets to tape “House.”

Let’s hope the computer guys are right, and this glitch is just a wrinkle in time.
At the very least, keep Arnold Schwarzenegger on standby.

Dear columnist Jacob Bennett, at 8 a.m. today someone poisons the coffee. Do not drink the coffee. More instructions to follow. Cordially, Future jacobmbennett@hotmail.com.