a fake Polaroid of some tomatoes growing on my windowledge, yesterday

i have made soap and this is it here

I had to make labels for it, because otherwise it just looks like cheese. Hey, maybe I should make cheese? I went to a cheese factory once, there was a man behind a big window who made cheese while you watched, which is a bit weird really when you think about it. I think he was stirring it with a spade, I can't remember. It really smelled like cheese in there though, let me tell you.

But take my word for it, this is good old-fashioned cold process soap. You make it by melting solid fats & oils and mixing them with a solution of sodium hydroxide and water. Then you stir it up until it starts to get thick, add essential oils and pour into a mould. I used a shallow cardboard box lined with waxed paper. It takes 12 or so hours to set, during which time it heats up alarmingly - it burned off a lot of the essential oils during this process, leaving it with a fairly subtle scent. Then you hack it into chunks and leave it to cure for a few weeks.

I don't know what I was expecting, but I was really surprised when it actually worked. I mean, it lathers up like real soap and everything! Wowsers.

zombies do not want to eat your brains

Let's get something straight. Zombies do not want to eat your brains. 'What?' you say, 'but zombies LOVE brains, whenever I pretend to be a zombie, I'm always like "ughghghhhhhh braaaaaiiins", that's what zombies do'. Wrong. Zombies do not talk, for a start. Except for that one that says 'Hello Aunt Alicia' - we'll let that one slide. Also, they do not crave brains. Perpetuating this myth makes a mockery of the genre that I simply cannot allow to continue. So, I have swallowed the facts. Then I digested them, and this is what came out of the other end.

OK, so zombies do sometimes eat brains. I know I just said they didn't, but I am trying to make a point, for heaven's sake. Anyway, zombies do sometimes eat brains. They also sometimes eat feet, fingers, guts and anything else they can get their grubby undead hands on. The point is, a zombie would pretty much only eat your brain if your head had already been conveniently smashed in. A zombie won't take the time to bash your head in like a 4 minute egg when there's a nice bit of fresh neck on offer. That's because:

Zombies do not use tools. Except for that one that shot some guy. Don't try to pick holes in my argument, zombies aren't real, you idiot. Anyway, they don't use tools. Except for that one that smashed a window with a crowbar. Look, whatever. Imagine how hard it would be to gnaw through someone's skull. Why would you bother with that when you can just rip out their soft gizzards? Exactly.

Zombies reproduce by biting, which infects the victim with zombie germs. If the victim manages to get away, the resulting infection will eventually kill them, whereupon they become a zombie themselves. However, if said victim were overpowered by zombies and unable to escape, they would only be eaten until they became a zombie. There's no time for eating brains! We're talking lights out to re-animation in a matter of minutes. It's a cold, hard fact that zombies do not eat each other. If they did, you wouldn't have to worry about them so much. Note that I said 'you' wouldn't have to worry about them. Me? I'm not worried.

The myth that zombies crave brains above all other human meat arises from just one film - Return of the Living Dead. There are at least 307 zombie films in existence, meaning Return of the Living Dead makes up approximately 0.325% of zombie movie history. By allowing this fleeting side-step in the evolution of the zombie to perpetuate, we are grossly inflating the cinematic importance of this comedic shambles of a film.

In a nutshell - if you destroy the brain, you destroy the zombie. Therefore, if zombies went round eating people's brains, they would cease to be the exponentially reproductive threat that we all know they are. And that just doesn't make sense. So stop it.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/02/20/

new year's resolution: never leave the house again

Praise the lord! I am back in my own house. The problem with visiting parents is that a) their food is always much more expensive & luxurious, not to mention abundant, and b) their houses are so much cleaner. Now I am back here, everything seems to be coated in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs and there's nothing but old potatoes and toffee pennies to eat.

This is the first time I've been on the internet in 4 days. 4 LONG DAYS. My feed reader has collapsed under the weight of all the backed up information. Unfortunately, in the absence of the internet, I have become addicted to Fallout 3. Now all I can think about is getting back out into the irradiated wastelands to club some bloated mole rats upside the head with a baseball bat. So there's no time for grocery shopping really. I'll just live off the fat reserves I have built up from eating sherry trifle every day for a week, until hunger finally drives me out of the house.