Zombie say what?!?

IN THEIR OWN WORDS—Paz Nothing left to the imagination

Zombie say what?!?

Pssssst! Hey, you. Yeah, you. Come here.

Never mind why I’m whispering or why I’m breathing in your ear. This is important, so listen up.

I got another conundrum. This one, I’m afraid, is worse than the toilet faeries.

Why?

It involves zombies.

Now, before I continue, let me emphatically state, I don’t believe in zombies. I don’t even like zombies—in my movies, on my television, or in my books or video games. Certainly, I don’t want them in real life.

I’d rather be a UFO-abductee, okay? Something I would vehemently deny ever being, of course, so lay off.

But here’s the deal.

I have a booktrailer up on YouTube. It’s been there since mid-February, 2012. About two weeks after that, this blog was started, so they’ve been around roughly the same time.

For a while, the YouTube video was outdoing the blog in views. When I realized YouTube was counting the times I would go check the views as a view, I stopped doing it so frequently. Since that time, the number of views have dropped substantially.

In the meantime, the number of hits to the blog have averaged considerably more, up to a factor of five. This has been going on since the beginning of this year. And no, the blog doesn’t count my visits or refreshes.

Yet despite that, the blog still lags behind the booktrailer, by more or less the same margin it always has over the same period of time.

The math simply doesn’t make any sense.

Okay, so what does any of that have to do with zombies?

Well, the paradoxical relationship between my blog and the booktrailer reminded me of a similar disparity that takes place when zombies chase humans.

Zombies are slow, lumbering creatures. Sometimes their extremities fall off when they move. Humans are at least twice as fast as they are. And yet, as inevitably as it is inexplicable, zombies catch up.

Since it wasn’t just a B-movie blunder I was trying to rationally explain—the well-being of my blog may well be at stake—I turned to the internet for help.

While there are literally thousands of entries for what zombies look like, their feeding preferences, and killing zombie how-tos, I didn’t find anything which attempted to explain how zombies catch humans.

I did run across movies and other media where zombies are actually faster than humans. After careful research and much soul-searching, however, I’ve come to believe that such claims are preposterous, and may very well be decoys deployed to lull humanity into a false sense of security. By the zombies themselves, and their movie-making minions.

At this juncture, you might ask, “What the heck are you talking about?” or “You said zombies aren’t real!”

Of course, they’re not real. But I still need an explanation for my blog, now don’t I?

I considered the possibility that this was just a simple case of tortoise and hare syndrome, but quickly dismissed it. Yes, humans were stupid and perhaps a little arrogant for thinking they could congregate in enclosed, indefensible places with no escape plan, actually waiting for the zombies to catch up and then expect any other outcome other than joining the thronging ranks of the undead.

Still, that didn’t satisfactorily explain how zombies are able to catch up to screaming, curvaceous young blonde women in an open field.

Then it struck me. Zombies must have powers. You know, beyond being ambulatory when they’re technically not alive.

Now, I haven’t quite figured out how they do it, but I’ll list the options, and you can pick out your favorites. How they do it, aside from it being something they come upon naturally (zombies aren’t smart enough to invent technology) doesn’t really matter. What matters is, they do it.

1) Zombies can teleport when no one’s looking.

2) Zombies can cast spells which make you think you’re running away, when you’re really just running in place.

3) Zombies can alter the rotation of the earth, relative to themselves, so while they’re really slow, they always catch up.

4) Zombies can hypnotize, which is a less magical variation of the whole casting spells thing.

5) Zombies can time travel. They might do this by slipping into alternate faster realities, or they might just do it straight up. Again, it doesn’t matter.

Okay, so there it is. How zombies catch humans.

Can you see how much more sinister and diabolical these possible explanations are than simply making them faster?

Okay, so I have the hows, but I’m still not sure which one might apply best to my blog and booktrailer.

I think I can rule out numbers 1, 3 and 5. My blog and booktrailer aren’t really moving. The number of views just go up.

While they’re pretty conventional, and thus, certainly not my favorites—five is the coolest, if you ask me—number two or four would seem to apply the most. In other words, my blog and booktrailer are under some spell, or I am, or I’m being hypnotized into thinking my blog should be catching up faster, when it’s really not. All because of a zombie.

Wait.

That would seem to be the exact opposite of the whole zombie thing, wouldn’t it? My blog having more views but never catching up.

Rats!

What? No! That’s it! Inverted cause and effect! The slower they go, the more ground zombies cover! The fewer views my booktrailer has, the more it stays ahead!

Whew. Finally. I was worried I might talk you through this and not make any sense at all.

Hmmm. Okay. Now, it occurs to me I have another quandary to resolve.

How do I apply inverted cause and effect to making money?

I’ll have to get back to you on that one.