It's been on so many TV shows and
in so many movies I guess when it really seems to happen it must be kind of
spooky. I'm talking about the zombie apocalypse.
Two news items caught my eye
recently that put me in mind of the walking dead. Why is it, by the way, that
we seem so obsessed with zombies? Must be a distorted distillation of our
longing for an afterlife. If not heaven or hell then animated corpses or
vampires. One way or the other folks don't want to accept mortality.
Philosophical pondering aside, here
are the stories. A computer bug recently caused the Selective Service System to
send more than 14,000 "draft registration" letters -- to men born in
the 1800s. I suppose the computer figured they were sort of over 18. What's a
couple of zeros to a computer. 18. 1800. Meh.
One 73-year-old guy, from
Pennsylvania, was, as he put it, "dumbfounded" after he got a letter
demanding that his late grandfather register for the draft or face
imprisonment.
"You betcha, you draft office
whippersnappers. I'll just hop right out of the grave and shuffle down and
register. Or maybe not. Prison sounds a lot nicer than a cramped moldy
casket..."
The other walking dead story caused
a different fall out. Literally and figuratively. A malfunctioning door caused
a corpse to fall out of the back of a coroner's van onto a busy Pennsylvania
road, making traffic come to a, dare I say it, dead stop. One driver thought it
was a prank and couldn't decide whether to cry or laugh. Certainly a new take
on deadpan humor.
I wonder. Since both incidents
happened in Pennsylvania; do you think the corpse was actually hitching a ride
to the draft board?
America, ya gotta love it.
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