Welcome to Strange.. Population Zero.. Or_ How I survived the Zombie Apocalypse.

  

Sometimes you know- you hear about really bad shit before it actually happens to you on the TV.  Like take for instance this whole situation that the world currently finds itself in- they’re calling it the real zombie apocalypse. some nit wit lab tech got infected by some stupid virus that some bio chemist had been working on for some fucked up government agency. He got out- went bonkers and bit somebody and infected them and it just kept spreading from there. Sure, Sure, it was a bit more complicated than that but that was the gist of it.

Next thing you know its all over the news, in every major city, riots, mass hysteria, people getting infected by the thousands. End of the line- Zombie apocalypse, front and center, live and in technicolor. Hell, even though I saw a lot of it on TV before everything went off the air I still either found myself not believing it or not caring about it. that is until it came to my neighborhood, I lived in Pleasant city on Primrose street. See- the first one I actually saw was what was looking a lot like my neighbor down the street, Fred Boxner. kinda tall, skinny, lanky, whatever, he always did walk a bit slow, never noticed the blood on his shirt or the drool dripping down his chin, he still had that same vacant look in his eyes that he always did though.

I remember it was just before breakfast on a Monday morning, the sun was out and there was a little chill in the air as I stepped out onto the porch. I sat my coffee cup down and watched ol Fred drag his sorry undead ass up the empty street, and then it struck me- I never liked that prick much anyways. Fred was the type to always have an angle on everything, the rotten bastard never ever bought his own shit, if you had something that he could use he would borrow it by hook or by crook and you would more than likely never see it again, and now that I was thinking about it- that prick still had my weed whacker and lawn mower that he’d borrowed from me over six weeks ago.

So here he came, lumbering down the street, and that’s about when I had my first epiphany.  If this really was the end if the line for the whole damn human race, and there really wasn’t anymore law and order to be had, I suppose that left me with the only option that I had left,  if ol Fred really was now a full fledged zombie I guess that left me with little choice in the matter but to go into survival mode. See- the problem most people have always had with me was what many of my neighbors considered an unhealthy appetite for automatic weapons. and I own a LOT of automatic weapons.  so I walk back into the house not panicking at all, I go into my special room and retrieve The S&W automatic 12 gauge shotgun and load a fresh clip into it before returning to the street to greet ol Fred.

So he’s still about halfway down the block when he first sees me, I can tell right away by looking into his beady little undead eyes that he was getting excited at the prospect of having a brain sandwich at my expense. So I step down onto the side walk and call out to him.                                                                                                                 

“Hey Fred? unless you’re coming down here to return my weed whacker and lawn mower you might want to take your scrawny- ugly slobbering undead ass in a different direction! this isn’t going to end well for you ol buddy”

“Gaaaaaaaaahhh... unnnngh.. Raaaaaawr!”

“Think it through Fred, you don’t want none of this.”

“Arrrrrrrgh... gnaaaaaaagh!”

“C’mon Fred... You know I have issues.”

So, ol Fred, yeah, he never was  the sharpest knife in the drawer. So I raise the barrel of the S&W And the first round the I fire off takes off his left leg. He drops to the ground still making those nasty gurgling noises. But I can tell the pain isn’t registering, he’s way too far gone. So I calmly walk up to him and take off his head with the very next shot. I look around and don’t see anybody else, and I also decide that I’m not waiting around either, so I go home and pack up the blazer with supplies and enough guns, and ammo along with a few other weapons that I had lying around & whatever food I had to last me awhile. I had a reserve gas tank installed on it awhile back in case of emergencies, the primary and the reserve were both full.

So I get it packed up and decide to head out for the country,  strange I don’t recall seeing much of anybody on the way out of town, I guess they were just faster then me to see the urgency of the situation and high tailed it out of there before the zombie horde arrived. so with an uncertain future ahead of me and one dead ex neighbor behind me, I head for the sunset.  My name is Jacob P. Callahan and this is my new life now here in the zombie apocalypse.. things are gonna get strange I suppose, even stranger than ever before, my name is Jacob- but you can call me Crash.

Scratch. Copyright© 2014

Sunday Morning.. 11/3/2013, After awhile it gets hard trying to make trees look interesting.

I knew that there was going to be cloud cover of some sort coming in from the East this morning, but I didn't know to what extent. I got up in time to make coffee- loaded new batteries in the camera, I even had time to dig out a warmer coat from deep within the mess that lives in my walk-in closet.  so I had my coffee, and locked down the apartment somewhere around 6:00 AM or so, so that left me about forty minutes to get my butt down to Fairview Drive. Halfway there, I noticed that it was getting lighter but there was no sign of any color developing what-so-ever. The whole sky was this dreary looking grey. There was absolutely zero light shining through the cloud cover, I thought I was going to get skunked again so I doubled back and went to the Governor's field bike trail to wait for a little color and get out of this cold breeze that was kicking up. the whole time I was out I got nothing. I came home feeling defeated and wouldn't you know it just as soon as I got here the color showed up. It was way too late to go back out so I played out the hand that was dealt  to me again, I ended up shooting around the wires and the trees across the street from here. I'm learning a tough lesson here, its hard to make tree's look interesting after awhile, luckily for me the ones over here are a bit different than the ones on Fairview. The treetops here have this odd little spiney fingers look to them, still I need to find something other than trees to put in the foreground. ahhh well it is what it is I suppose.

This is one of the more interesting shots I took  from this morning, the tree itself got kind of blurred out and the auto focus trained on the trees in the middle and blurred out the clouds in the background too a little, I left the wires in the shot, I just thought it was somehow better this way.

Morons on Parade. this is pretty sickening,

Sunday Morning Sunrise.

So I got up early this morning, for whatever reason, couldn't sleep heard a noise- whatever, checked weather.com and it said that there would be some cloud cover rolling in just before sunrise at around 6:46 AM this morning. So I threw down a quick cup of joe, grabbed the camera and the bike and headed out for the Lepire Drive bike trail- (which is quickly becoming my  favorite place to shoot from) So I get all the way to the overpass on 5th, and its still kind of this grayish- murky dark color out, thats when I picked up the camera case and discovered that the camera wasn't even in it. nice- way to pay close attention Scratch ol bean! so I hurry back to the  apartment and bolted up stairs and snatched the camera off of the desk where I'd left it, jumped back on the bike and headed back out to Lepire. I got these just before the sun came up, I noticed though that I'm probably going to have to learn to shoot in low lighting with this new Camera if I'm going to continue with my sunrise experiments. I'll go through the manual again this morning and see what it says, some of the images from this batch seem a little grainy to me, maybe its from the the image editor that I'm using but I'm not sure. anyhow I got some ok shots. I'm so ready for the fall!  

Finally Got it!

All of the overtime that I've been putting in for the past two weeks finally paid off yesterday! although that last hour at work deliberately seemed to take its time getting over with, as soon as it did though I got home and hit the shower and immediately afterwards made a beeline to the Carson Nugget to cash my check and then it was off to Office Depot to get the new camera, I went with the Canon  SX 160 IS, with 16 MP's and 16 x optical zoom.. great little camera, and its definitely a step up from the old one. I had to buy a case as well though, the little bugger is a tad too big to fit in the old one, over all, I'm a happy guy!

Finding Heaven

Friday August 29^th 2008. 10:04 PM.

Here lately it seems that I seem to do all of my best, my clearest thinking at night. Maybe I have always had that tendency, but I don’t ever recall noticing it before, but it seems to be the case at least in my recent memory. So, tonight, I find myself in a familiar posture, alone in my dark living room in front of yet another blank screen patiently waiting for my touch to bring it to life. A fan in the window carries a slightly less than warm late summer breeze through my personal space, the faint scent of freshly brewed coffee fills my senses, Its not warm in here, yet strangely not cold either, the mood is perfect for a little reflection. Is Heaven real? Hmmm. Its as good a question as any I suppose, I saw that written somewhere, or perhaps I heard it spoken, I don’t really recall, only that it was recently brought into place somewhere in the back of my mind this week, and it appears to have stayed there until now.

I knew Heaven once, I lived there, somewhere in my early childhood, and on some nights, some like this night, I can close my eyes and see it as plain as day.

There is a wooden floor beneath my bare feet, my small hands clutch the brass doorknob , and it turns freely, I give the door a slight nudge and it swings outward onto a back porch that seems slightly sloped to one side. I step out into the early morning air, the fresh dew, and the grass seems to flow out into the world forever, in an endless sea of beautiful green. There are large trees that stretch up into the sky for miles on end, and on one of the lower branches there is a tire swing that hangs strangely still as if it were waiting for the next ride. And as I step onto the grass the cold dew seeps up and over the tops of my feet giving me a strange sensation.

I’m not sure what it is truthfully, whether or not the world really was a much larger place then than it is now, or if it just seems that way, because I was seeing it through the eyes of a child. It was more magical, there was more wonder, and Heaven was a real place that I lived in, a place that I touched regularly. Now, as I begrudgingly return to the here and now, and that childhood memory slowly fades, I find myself wondering if I will ever see heaven again. oh I am certain that I catch glimpses of it every now and then, but the magic isn’t what it once was, and the open spaces in the world of childhood have become somewhat cramped and closed in. but thankfully the world can still be a place of wonder, You just have to force yourself to stop what you are doing every once in awhile to take part in it.

Yes, I know Heaven to be real, I just don’t live there anymore, I don’t see endless fields of green, and miles of empty clean blue skies, and a lot of the trees have been cut down, to make room for new housing tracks. I am not a child anymore, I don’t see the world the same way as I used to, it is a bit smaller now, and I can see it for what it truly is. I see the bad with the good, and take both as I see fit. Everyone has their own interpretation of Heaven, and certainly to some it remains a myth. The reality for me is simple, I know that I will never be able to again see the world through the eyes of a ten year old child, but that doesn’t mean that I have to stop trying. So on finding Heaven? I guess it all depends on where you look.

A new Camera Coming soon.. (I'm Hoping)

While I was going through my pictures folders the other day I came across some older pics that I took last year that never made it onto a blog post. And then I realized I have only ever shared- (For the most part) – any of my photography on Blogster and occasionally on Facebook but I have rarely posted anything on Blogger in concerns to my photography.   All of the pictures I’ve taken were taken with my little Canon  PowerShot A810, and mostly it is of Nevada Sunrises and (More recently)  sunsets, here lately though the zoom button on the camera has been on the fritz so I will have to be buying a new one soon. I have my choices narrowed down to 2 possibilities  #1- the Canon SX 160 IS with 16x optical zoom and 16 mp’s. #2- The Canon SX 500 IS with 30x zoom and  also has 16 MP’s. Below are some of the pictures that I took last year with my old Canon. The last pic is a little blurry but it came out with a kinda surreal feeling to it so I included it.