More from the Internets

Good morning, Tubeites. Time for some links.

• A new Nightmare on Elm Street, featuring a new Freddy Krueger. The creative team behind this one is apparently well-known for its "reboot films". What sound does an empty well make?


• The government decides to shrink the U.S. Postal Service. This all at once makes me both happy and sad; this seems like part of an inevitable move toward a paper-light world, and a herald of some shifts that I can't help but consider unfortunate. It's not as though the U.S. government has a history of handling technological shifts well...


• Comcast interrupts Super Bowl with porn. This is comedy that writes itself...


• Road sign warns of zombies. Viral marketing. Hur hur hur.

I got bit.

Fucking survivors from lunch came back and holed up here with us, and of course, of course, because no-one pays attention to what's happening, someone snuck a bite wound past us, and then he died in the bathroom and we didn't notice until he was trying to gnaw Devin's face off...

Fuck. Fuck.

It sort of itches, and I can feel my blood buzzing. My head's light and my brain's on fire and I know I don't have very long if Miller and Harrison are any indication.

I'd kill myself, but I know that any of these idiots is going to take forever to kill me. There are some cops outside; I'm going to go hole up in the stairwell and hope that whoever finds me first makes it quick.

I'm sure there will be plenty of these--little snippets of blog posts left by bite victims and trapped soon-to-be bite victims, the last traces of ended lives. I wish mine were a little more poetic, but I can't afford time that could be spent getting away from survivors.

Bye.

I work on the 4th floor of an office building in Foster City, in one of the least pedestrian-friendly areas I have ever visited. Getting to us requires either an elevator ride or a four-story stair climb to a pair of security doors, which only a company ID can access. The windows only overlook the parking lot, and you can't hear anything from outside--it's so quiet in here we're startled when people in the 5th floor gym drop weights too hard.

I say this so you'll understand why I didn't know before now, and why I am apologizing to all of my readers who have lost somebody.

When I was on the train this morning they talked about emergency exits and where to find them; today's monthly meeting had a segment on power outages, and warned us about the accidents and problems currently gumming up every form of transit, mass or otherwise, in and out of the area, to a chorus of groans.

Groans. Jesus, there's a word I'm going to start hating. Metacommentary: My anti-drug.

I am for once really glad I tend to take off for lunch a few minutes later than others--I found out when I opened the security door and saw the little bastards pounding at the mesh security door a story down. They had downed two of the WoW players from the next row while they were on the stairs, and I got lucky enough to come out the door and freeze in shock just in time to watch Miller drag himself up off the floor and look at me like I was slightly up and to the left of where I was standing. I can safely say that no movie has ever properly duplicated the effect of someone walking with a broken neck.

I'm safe. I guess I'm calm. I have phones and Internet, for the moment, and toilets, running water, and a supply of food that will at least suffice to keep us from starving. But then I think about my friends, and my loved ones, and all the people who aren't in this fortress and I go into a whirlwind of panic and almost fall over.
Please. Sound out. Comment. Let me know you're alright.

If you see a man anywhere near Foster City going by Adam French, please, call 650-495-6716 and let me know, his wife wants to know where he is. If you are in Foster City and you need somewhere safe to be, come to 1051 East Hillsdale and call that number, or my cell (650-495-2819). I'll let you in, but if you have a bite on you I will kill you myself.

I can't believe I'm saying this. Please, be safe.

What's the Opposite of Congested

I normally don't post about my real life on this blog, but after today and yesterday I need more than my usual vents to get through...

My train was packed to standing-room-only capacity again, and then crawled past San Antonio and California Ave because of another fatality on the tracks. I'd thought we were just seeing a series of technical problems, like maybe Caltrain's maintenance teams were way behind schedule, but two fatalities in two weeks, both during commute hours? This is ridiculous. It's starting to be hard to empathize, especially when the conductors keep trying to make light of it.Oh, and because no bad day is complete without three things to make it crappy, the train was full of sick people. I mean really, stupidly sick, like clearing throats and sunken eyes all up and down every car I went through. If I get the flu I'm going to stab someone in the jugular.

What's problem three, you ask? Mysterious network outages at work, of course! They're saying there was a power failure at our main storage facility and a bunch of client-facing applications (read: things that make us look like idiots when they're down) are not working yet, which also means that I'll get back from my monthly meeting to find every proofreading request ever written since the dawn of mankind sitting in my inbox. Seriously, I expect slabs of rock with Semitic on them.

I have hated this week.