MY LIFE: No! I Don't Want To Be A Frightened, Scrawny 14-Year-Old Nerd Boy Again!

This is from me, and NOT some reprinted material. - OlderMusicGeek

So I stood in front of her. Not saying a word. My eyes staring at those fingers sitting on phone's keyboard, waiting for a response from me.

It was a simple enough question. Quite simple actually. And I knew the answer. I rattled it off on quite a regular basis. But now, I just stood perfectly still in front of her like a deer in headlights, waiting for the truck to slam 70 miles per hour into it.

And what exactly brought me to this sorry, embarrassing state? There lies a stupid, silly, foolish tale. Fortunately for you, dear reader, not really a very long one.


I was at a musical festival and saw this wonderful band that did an interesting blend of old time rock and roll with alternative rock. Even did a good cover of “Folsom Prison Blues”! I made a mental note to add them as a Facebook and MySpace friend so I would know when they were playing next.

Then a later band, that was giving shout outs to all the bands that played that day, mentioned that the band I liked was giving away a cd with three of their songs... for free! I groaned in frustration in having missed out! And I had actually seen the lead singer earlier and told her I liked her music, but it was in the middle of another band's set and I just saw her in passing, so that was the extent of the conversation.

Well, later as I'm coming out of the building, who should be heading for the building but that cute little lead singer!

And I won't lie! She was damn cute!

I don't know if this has anything to do with anything, but... I am a male-to-female transsexual who has just started transitioning. So I still look pretty “guy-ish” and was going about as a male. And my sexual preference can best be described as confused, but bisexual works well as anything!

And I will say this cute lead singer had this sweet hippie look going on with this long straight black hair, long dangling “crafty”-type earings, adorable silver frame librarian type glasses, a white spaghetti strap t-shirt, and some ripped jeans to finish the effect.


So anyway, I stop her and tell her that I heard they were giving away free cd's.

She suddenly gets a look of disappointment on her face. “Oh, sorry, we did! But we're out now!”

Urgh! Curses!

Then she follows with, “Well, could I get your information, so I can send you to the website?”

“Uh, sure!”

And that, dear readers, is when it happened.

She got out her phone, looked up at me with her soft eyes and asked me THE question.

“Can I get your phone number?”


What can I say? I just froze up. Completely, totally and utterly.

And my poor brain was running at overdrive. Part of my head was going, “Wha? Huh? Wait? What did she say? That can't be right. No, okay, now wait.”

Another part of my brain is trying to be all reasonable about this. “Okay, calm down. Let's think this though. There might be another explanation. You really weren't that into her before now. And she's probably half your age! And closer to your daughter's age than you!”

A third part of the brain is going, “Hey, idiot, she just wants your number to promote her band!”

That last part of my brain might have saved me and set me straight, except in most of my brain, there was basically a huge alarm clanging super loudly from different locations while a whole bunch of red lights, like the ones on top of police cars, twirled around and around, and a mechanical voice screamed, “Danger! Danger! Does not compute! Does not compute!”

If smoke was billowing out of my ears, I would not have been surprised!

What can I say? I haven't been much of a lady catcher, due to being a shy nerd and, more than likely, the fact that, until recently, I was a transsexual in repression and hiding it from myself.


So I stood there in front of her with my eyes staring at her fingers sitting on her phone for what felt like five to ten minutes, though was probably actually less than one.

“Well, that is if you don't mind?” I suddenly heard her say.

I was then quickly knocked out of the evil spell.

I mumbled yes and quietly gave her my number, and with prompting, my name and email.

Then being the suave, sophisticated guy I am, I said I would check out her band again if I wasn't busy with my thirteen-year-old daughter.

Yeah, great, I'm sure mentioning my thirteen-year-old daughter proved I had no interest in her and I wasn't a blubbering idiot because I was attracted to her.

Anyway, after that, I mumbled a fast good-bye, scurried away quickly as possible and prayed I wouldn't see her for the rest of the festival. And wondered what the freak I was going to do if she recognized me at her next show!

ENTERTAINMENT and SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: The Perfect Movie For Easter

A link to other Easter post on my blog

ON ANOTHER BLOG: "SCIENCE and PERSONALITY TYPE: The Which Part of the Brain Are You? Test" on OlderMusicGeek's Stupid Tests And Quizzes (click)

CULTURE/SOCIETY: Happy World Zombie Day!

This is from me, NOT some reprinted piece. - OlderMusicGeek

Well, in case, you haven't heard, today is World Zombie Day. So I just want to wish every a deadly, brain-eating day tomorrow!

Unfortunately, my town isn't participating. Uuuugggghhhhh!!!! (That's suppose to be an angry zombie yowl!)

But included, on my site, are some links to zombie stuff I've done before and a couple of new posts on zombies.

And here's a couple of more zombie songs!




A link to all the posts I've done on zombies
A link to a piece I did on the songs, "Zombies Ate Her Brain" By The Creepshow And "Fashion Zombies" By The Aquabats"
A link to The World Zombie Day MySpace page
A link to other Halloween posts on my blog

SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION: Was Jesus A Zombie?

From the website, Zombie Jesus... - OlderMusicGeek

1) He came back from the dead

Acts 2:24
But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him

2) He encourages zombie like behavior

John 6:53
Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you"

Excerpts from The Uncyclopedia's article on Zombie Jesus.... - OMGeek

It was as the subtle, burning glances of His onlooking Roman captors, the angry, Jewish rabble, and remorsefully sullen followers became more stricken with terror, fright, and penance that Zombie Jesus returned to this world, forcing his broken, tired limbs, blood-stained from the mortal wounds he had suffered, to pull his undead carcass from the rough hued Cross so that he might seek the most appropriate Earthly sustenance deserved of the sacrificed son of God: a crimson river of Flesh and Brains to satiate his heavenly hunger.

History

After dying, Jesus was raised from the dead and once more walked among the living. This, of course, would only be possible if he were a zombie; Zombie Jesus is the identity of Jesus following the Resurrection. In zombie form, Jesus retained his unending love for mankind, in particular, he loved their sweet, delectable brains. Many of his followers were surprised when, instead of offering God's salvation, Zombie Jesus voraciously consumed their faces.

It is now widely believed today that Jesus was the source breeder of modern-day zombies, since when he resurrected, he infected his disciples with the blood of the new "Holy Alliance", thus founding the basis for whole new era of zombie mayhem, unseen since the infection of elite Greek philosophers by Zombie Plato several centuries before.

Teachings and Acts of Zombie Jesus

Zombie Jesus' words and acts are recorded in one of the apocryphal books (books which were not included in the New Testament by the Catholic Church), the "Book of Brains". The most famous part of the "Book of Brains" is the "Parable of the Brains", in which Zombie Jesus spoke unto the assembled masses: "Braaaiiins.... braaaiiinnnss... braaaaiinss!!" (in the original Greek of the Gospel, "μυαλό.... μυααααλό.... μυααααλό!!!").

Defeating Zombie Jesus

Unlike the common zombie or the common Jesus, Zombie Jesus is notoriously difficult to put down. The garden-variety zombie can be killed by a shovel to the brain, but only the Soviets (and Cthulhu armed with a pair of Sephiroth-chucks) could defeat Zombie Jesus... He was mutated back into the form of a man, which was very short lived for he was quickly killed by a Nazi, because despite being a former Messiah, zombie, and Kraken, he was still a Jew, and Nazis hate Jews..

Vampire Jesus?

The debate over whether Jesus came back as a zombie or a vampire caused yet another schism in the Christian Church, and forming two new Christian denominations: Zombie Christians and Vampire Christians. About half of the population of Vampire Christians claim that they converted because "Vampires are just so much more awesome than zombies". These people were insane, of course. Zombies are far superior.

A link to the Zombie Jesus web site
A link to the Uncyclopedia's article on Zombie Jesus

Post On Another Blog

"MUSIC: Songs Of The Day - Halloween Edition (Oct 18): "Zombies Ate Her Brain" By The Creepshow And "Fashion Zombies" By The Aquabats" on OlderMusicGeek's Stupid Entertainment Stuff

Post On Another Blog

"MOVIES/VIDEOS, TELEVISION/VIDEOS and BOOKS: The Top 7 Most Embarrassing Moments In Science Fiction" on OlderMusicGeek's Stupid Entertainment Stuff

CULTURE/SOCIETY: Robot Rights - A Poser for the 21st Century

Nothing new here for science fiction fans. But I'm printing it anyway. :)

This is from the English newspaper, The Guardian. - Why are the Europeans always ahead of us on trends? - I found this article through my home page from NetVibes. - OlderMusicGeek

Robot rights - a poser for the 21st century
James Randerson, science correspondent
The Guardian,Wednesday January 16 2008

The fight against discrimination based on race, gender, class and sexuality may not yet be won, but experts in artificial intelligence are warning that this century societies will have to tackle a new prejudice - against individuals with brains made of silicon.

Even the most enthusiastic promoters of robot rights admit that it is likely to be mid-century before humanity has to grant legal rights to our creations, but they say we should start considering the problems now.

Dr Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at the University of Oxford, said that even though present-day robots are not cognitively very impressive they should not be written off. "I don't think you should ever say never, especially with regard to technology. There's no good reason whatever for being confident that robots will not reach human-level intelligence and indeed pass human-level intelligence."

At a conference yesterday in London organised by the Centre for Bioethics and Public Policy, he predicted a time when robots become so intelligent they will need to be granted equivalent rights to humans. "If it has the same experience and the same capabilities we shouldn't treat it any differently if it is made of silicon rather than carbon." Those rights might include owning property and a bank account and the right not to be turned off.

But Professor Noel Sharkey, a robotics expert at the University of Sheffield, doubts that robots will ever achieve that sort of intelligence. "I can't deny that this is possible, but as a scientist there's absolutely no evidence for it."

A link to the article in The Guardian

SCIENCE: Emotions Run Amok in Sleep-Deprived Brains

Picked this up from Yahoo. It's originally from Live Science. - OlderMusicGeek

Emotions Run Amok in Sleep-Deprived Brains
By Charles Q. Choi, Special to LiveScience

Without sleep, the emotional centers of our brains dramatically overreact to bad experiences, research now reveals.

"When we're sleep deprived, it's really as if the brain is reverting to more primitive behavior, regressing in terms of the control humans normally have over their emotions," researcher Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, told LiveScience.

Anyone who has ever gone without a good night's sleep is aware that doing so can make a person emotionally irrational. While past studies have revealed that sleep loss can impair the immune system and brain processes such as learning and memory, there has been surprisingly little research into why sleep deprivation affects emotions, Walker said.

Walker and his colleagues had 26 healthy volunteers either get normal sleep or get sleep deprived, making them stay awake for roughly 35 hours. On the following day, the researchers scanned brain activity in volunteers using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while they viewed 100 images. These started off as emotionally neutral, such as photos of spoons or baskets, but they became increasingly negative in tone over time—for instance, pictures of attacking sharks or vipers.

"While we predicted that the emotional centers of the brain would overreact after sleep deprivation, we didn't predict they'd overreact as much as they did," Walker said. "They became more than 60 percent more reactive to negative emotional stimuli. That's a whopping increase—the emotional parts of the brain just seem to run amok."

The researchers pinpointed this hyperactive response to a shutdown of the prefrontal lobe, a brain region that normally keeps emotions under control. This structure is relatively new in human evolution, "and so it may not yet have adapted ways to cope with certain biological extremes," Walker speculated. "Human beings are one of the few species that really deprive themselves of sleep. It's a real oddity in nature."

In modern life, people often deprive themselves of sleep "almost on a daily basis," Walker said. "Alarm bells should be ringing about that behavior—no pun intended."

Future research can focus on which components of sleep help restore emotional stability—"whether it's dreaming REM sleep or slow-wave, non-dreaming forms of sleep," Walker said.

Many psychiatric disorders, "particularly ones involving emotions, seem to be linked with abnormal sleep," he added. "Traditionally people mostly thought the psychiatric disorders were contributing to the sleep abnormalities, but of course it could be the other way around. If we can find out which parts of sleep are most key to emotional stability, we already have a good range of drugs that can push and pull at these kinds of sleep and maybe help treat certain kinds of psychiatric conditions."

The findings are detailed in the Oct. 23 issue of the journal Current Biology.

This might help explain road rage and the lack of manners and civility that people complain about.