Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Advertising for zombies

"Instinct is something which transcends knowledge."
- Nikola Tesla

Imagine a television commercial along these lines: A waitress lays out a series of options for her customer, like fanning a deck of cards. What kind of pie, and do you want real whipped cream on it, or oil? Wait a second...OIL?

Great advertising, right? I mean, who in the world wants oil on their pie? What a grotesque idea, to smear oil—something squeezed right out of plants—who in their right mind can stomach such a proposition?

Of course, right about now, a hefty dairy cow should burst through the door and slam a hoof down on the diner counter. "Ask it right," the bovine invader demands.

"What do you mean?" the waitress queries, a hand at her breast, feigning innocence, or at least ignorance

"Ask this poor woman if she would prefer a product on her dessert that comes from squeezing plants, or if she thinks it might taste better if I were to squeeze some secretion from my utter! Go ahead, oh knowledgeable waitress, ask her!" the beefy inquisitor decrees.

The customer does a double take. "Huh? Wait a second, she didn't mention she was going to express some of your baby's milk for me. No way, hey, I want the plant oil, definitely."

The waitress leaps between the customer and the cow. "No way. Don't listen to this old cow. She has a brain about as large as mine. You DON'T want oil on your pie, you want real whipped cream, that's the line, and that's the way you are going to read it."

The cow places a hoof on the waitress' shoulder and gives a very deliberate, nudge of provocation.

"You are not a real waitress, are you?" the cow says, with that particular sneer cows have when they have a big wad of cud in their teeth.

"Of course I am not a waitress, I only play one on TV, and that's better, ain't it? What, do you think I'm stupid or something?" the alleged actress spits.

The cow wipes waitress spittle from her chin, and now openly smiling says: "Now that you ask, why no, I don't think you're a waitress...or stupid. What I think you are is a paid liar. You, my dear, are a deceiver, pure and simple (not that there is anything pure of simple about being a deceiver)."

"Fact is, cow, real whipped cream is better than plant oil. Everyone knows that!"

The cow hefts her ponderous utter in her hoof and aims a long teet at the actress pretending to be a helpful, knowledgeable waitress. "You sure about that, honey? Here, why not try a sample of this real whipped cream!"

A thick, gooey jet of beige liquid arcs across the studio set and splats across the actor's face. It is heavy and viscous, this dredge, this oily liquid.

"Knock it off! That stuff is terrible! That ain't real whipped cream!" the actor shrieks, mopping at her face and running make-up with her tear-away uniform.

"Oh, it is real, all right, but it sure ain't natural. Do you know how much antibiotics they inject into me? Do you know the horrid grain they feed me? My body needs grass, and they feed me heavy corn laced with antibiotics and animal parts. That's what makes up what you so authoritatively call real whipped cream," the cow says, hooves on pronounced hips.

"Oh you are such a leftist, you're such a liberal," the actor snaps back, "save the earth, animal rights, welfare state, it's people like you that are ruining this world. Oh right, bless the beasts and the children."

"Sorry honey, but I'm none of those things. I'm a cow," she says, simply.

"Yeah, you sure are. Cow! Just shut up, and get out. You are a cow, you were made so we can drink your milk, and you only exist so we can eat you when you are too old to produce any more real whipped cream, so get off this set. You have no voice. You have no rights."

It would probably make for a far more interesting commercial.

Then there is the equally insulting commercial wherein a sweet-looking farmer's daughter strolls through the health, wind-whipped corn, assuring us that high-fructose corn syrup is really very good for us, in fact, as sugars go, your body just simply can't tell the difference between high-fructose corn syrup, and white, bleached, highly processed sugar that has had all its nutritional value removed.

That is pretty close to stating that your body can't tell the difference between getting run over by a Greyhound bus or a military tank. Think about it.

What the helpful farmer's daughter ain't being quite up-front about is the fact that high-definition brain scans prove that high-fructose corn syrup does not send a satiety message to the brain, as does sugar. There is no feeling of fullness, or satisfaction, or the warning klaxon that "this is just way too much!"

You eat a certain amount of sugar, and your brain screams: "Okay already, knock it off!"

With high-fructose corn syrup, you become addicted to the ever-present sweetness, and your body demands more and more of it, trying to receive that chemical message in the brain that "this is enough." Studies show that high-fructose corn syrup is one of—if not the leading cause of mounting obesity rates all over the planet.

The helpful, sweet farmer's daughter should conclude with: "Kill yourself with sugar, or kill yourself with high-fructose corn syrup, hey, what's the difference? Your body doesn't know the difference. You're dead either way. You are dead."

But maybe that is the clue. The television advertisers seem to be shooting their videos for zombies, not thinking, intelligent people. What does it matter, your body can't tell the difference between those who tell the truth, and those that want to suck first all your money out of your wallet, and second, all the life out of your body.

Because let's face it, zombies are just plain ole fun. You thought those were actors in those movies? No, those are the actual zombies that our society is creating, the zombies that painfully moan: "Real whipped cream! High-fructose corn syrup! Brains!"


Douglas Christian Larsen FREE Short Fiction
Available on KindleNookiBook, and Kobo

The Dragon & The Wolf - Free Novella by Douglas Christian Larsen

Read FREE Sample Chapters of the Douglas Christian Larsen Novel:

Read FREE Sample Chapters of the Rodolphus Novels:



Cyrano Hercule Savinien de Bergerac

DCLWolf Links:

Rodolphus Dark Literary Fiction

Before King and even Lovecraft, there were the dark writers Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Bronte. The latter explosively released the character Heathcliff into the world, in a black-light burst of birth fire. If there is any character as dark and yet as romantically attractive as Bronte's antihero— either before or after—it would be difficult to achieve any kind of consensus, official or otherwise. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes, or Jack London's Wolf Larsen.

The flawed hero captivates us. He or she is us, dark thoughts and impulses and all, achieving something grand, despite the very real weaknesses, the poor choices. The confusion of mind. And yet that strength of will. The keen daggers emanating from the eyes. The lowering brow, the intense clench of the forehead.

This good antihero, or this heroic villain, is the key factor that inspired Rodolphus into the intense writer his books prove him to be. Because Rodolphus, although tragically flawed, achieved heroic proportions in surviving both his life and career. Rodolphus created something different, even though it is certainly not perfect.

The Rodolphus stories are dark. The Rodolphus stories are violent. The Rodolphus stories are not for everyone.

But Rodolphus heroes rise above the darkness. And the Rodolphus stories, though murky, dark (with the strange light of orange eyes, just there on the periphery), cast beams of illumination. Rodolphus is a lantern moving strangely through the close woods.




Douglas Christian Larsen FREE Short Fiction
Available on KindleNookiBook, and Kobo

The Dragon & The Wolf - Free Novella by Douglas Christian Larsen

Read FREE Sample Chapters of the Douglas Christian Larsen Novel:

Read FREE Sample Chapters of the Rodolphus Novels:



Cyrano Hercule Savinien de Bergerac

DCLWolf Links:

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Influenza, solar activity and evil geniuses

Influenza, the common flu, is not generally a sexy enough zoonotic disease to figure in an "evil genius plotting to destroy the world" scenario; it has not appeared in any recent James Bond movies, or pop apocalyptic scenarios (well, there was Stephen King's 1978 The Stand, with "Captain Trips" escaping from a top secret military facility). In the 2009-2010 H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic, there were quite a many  lurking rumors and suspicions that the virus—which exploded like a bomb in Mexico and then impossibly swept the globe in about three months—was a man-made monstrosity of equal helpings of swine, bird and human DNA.

To manufacture a possible "evil-genius" plot for world dominance, what would be the necessary elements? If an evil genius living underground and experimenting on the flu virus truly desired to kill off a large percentage of the world's population, possibly more effectively than did the 1918-1919 Great Pandemic, what key ingredients would he diabolically stir into his killer brew, and what timing would be necessary to ensure that the viral bomb would explode with maximum weapon of mass destruction (WMD) certainty?
Historical documentation indicates that the various influenza pandemics that proliferated and killed across the world occurred at the peak, or just after the peak of periods of intense solar activity. Sunspots and solar flares walk hand in hand with influenza epidemics, and most notably with pandemics. British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle even speculated that "influenza particles" travel from the sun through space to spark off raging influenza blazes. The Science Frontiers website correlates influenza pandemics with sunspot peaks.

History informs us that when a devastating flu pandemic knifes through populations, it is a pattern that the "killer" flu" always follows a very weak version of the virus which spread harmlessly one to two years prior to the killer events. The weak version of the virus tends to appear, making the leap directly from swine to humans, during periods of minimal solar activity.

One theory is that the radiation from intense solar activity induces influenza viruses to swiftly and drastically mutate on a large scale, providing the opportunity for widely spread viruses all over the world to suddenly try on new angles of attack, new possible points of entry into animal and human breeding grounds; the more successful mutations—easily spread from victim to victim and highly pathogenic—erupt and invade and manically spread across the surface of the world.

Flu experts shook and scratched their heads all through the 2009-2010 pandemic, as the H1N1 Swine Flu virus spread more efficiently than any other virus in recorded history, and yet was strangely mild (except in rare instances where apparently healthy people without any prior health conditions, suddenly and irreversibly sickened and died, apparently due to massive cytokine storms similar to the 1918-1919 Great Pandemic, but thankfully on a comparatively limited modern scale). The more canny flu experts worried, greatly, of reassortment and recombination of two separate viruses, chiefly the deadly H5N1 Avian Flu (highly pathogenic, but not very transmissible between humans) and the weak H1N1 Swine Flu (easily transmissible between people), producing a new pandemic that spreads easily and kills easily.

The theoretical evil genius, rubbing his hands unctuously, occasionally loosing a maniacal evil-genius laugh, would most likely release his manufactured virus at a time of low solar activity, such as 2009-2010, which science described as unusually low. To ensure that his virus would spread with greatest ease, he would probably work with versions of the virus that can leap from people to swine, vice versa, and from swine to birds and vice versa. The H1N1 Virus, released in 2009-2010, could be set in place, firmly entrenched with competing viruses, ready and set and just waiting for "go," whenever the sun chooses to wake and spout off a few solar blasts.

As the sun awakened in 2011, the environment is set in place, with a solar storm blasting off on Valentine's Day 2011. Scientists forecast unusual solar activity in the near future, apparently in compensation for the years of solar off-time.

If an evil genius released a virus in 2009, he might now be clapping his hands in his hidden Shangri La, as all of his necessary ingredients are set in place. But what needs to happen now? To make it a good movie, the mutation needs to happen. That could be happening right now. It is happening right now, because mutation and flu are partners, and mutation is influenza's natural doorway to survival.

Perhaps in the Year 2021, we will look back and make the correlation, yes, indeed, solar activity and influenza do walk hand in hand. Ah, what a movie. What a movie, indeed.

For more information on influenza, please visit The Flu HQ.


Douglas Christian Larsen FREE Short Fiction
Available on KindleNookiBook, and Kobo

The Dragon & The Wolf - Free Novella by Douglas Christian Larsen

Read FREE Sample Chapters of the Douglas Christian Larsen Novel:

Read FREE Sample Chapters of the Rodolphus Novels:



Cyrano Hercule Savinien de Bergerac

DCLWolf Links: