Audiobook: Breathers: A Zombie's Lament by S. G. Brown

I just got done with this audiobook called 'Breathers: A Zombie's Lament' by S. G. Brown.

It's my first attempt at zombie fiction and it was pretty good for the most part. The story centers around a zombie named Andy, who woke up after a horrific car accident killed him and his wife to find that he's now one of the members of the the undead. In S. G. Brown's version of zombies, the undead are shunned members of society while the living, referred to as breathers, retain all rights as citizens.

Andy lives in his parents wine cellar doing nothing all day but watching cable TV and drinking expensive wine that gives him no pleasure. He spends his nights at the local zombie support group run by a recently deceased therapist. Andy can't talk because his mouth was sewn shut. One arm is near useless. Also, his ankle is broken so he's slow moving.

Getting to and from the meetings is dangerous as breathers take sport in pelting zombies with food, ripping off zombie appendages or just killing them for sport. His zombie friends of Jerry, a 'dude' speaking guy and Rita, a beautiful woman who's constantly applying makeup walk with him to and from the meetings.

I almost gave up on this book because it got long winded. Andy is constantly whining about how he doesn't understand why he can't just walk down the street without being yelled at or vandalized or why he can't sit in front of a fire without fear of being thrown into it.

The book picks up steam when Andy and his friends meet Ray, a zombie who they initially mistake for a breather. He introduces them to a treat of venison he calls 'Ray's Resplendent Rapture'. The meat is beyond delicious. Soon Andy starts to feel rebellious and is arrested by Animal Control, who polices the zombies, for trying to protest for zombie rights. Then he notices that he's starting to heal. Andy and his friends start to realize that Ray's meat may not be venison after all.

The book goes unconventional for a long time, but then kicks into zombie movie territory near the end of the book, which almost ruins it for me.

Overall, I liked it. The narrator's lamentable delivery (call back to the subtitle) means that when the jokes come every now and then (like the one where Andy is offered a finger and he says that he never liked finger food), that I was groaning a lot at the corny jokes.

Saw Toy Story 3 - Laura cried

Laura sometimes has some trouble with Pixar movies. For the longest time, she wouldn't watch Toy Story 2 because of the scene were Jessie the Cowgirl is telling her story of being loved and abandoned by a little girl who grew up.

As a parent, it's hard to sit through those kind of things and not think about the inevitable day when your kid will grow up and shun the very things that they used to love. It's sometimes welcome and sometimes sad.

When Julia was just two or three years old, we watched Monsters Inc. on DVD. At some point in the movie near the end, which may have been the time when Sully says goodbye
to Boo, the girl from the human world, I looked over at Laura to see her bawling like a baby.

I laughed and asked, "What's wrong?"

She said through tears, "This is why I hate Pixar movies. They just SUCK you right in and make you cry!"

Laura eventually got over those two movies's sadder moments and now can watch them with no problem.

However, Laura knew Toy Story 3 was going to be a problem when a co-worker who had seen it mentioned to Laura that it was a great movie and that it was sad.

"Am I going to cry?" she asked.

"Yes."

So Laura was going into the movie expecting it to be sad and expecting to cry.

The movie starts off the bat with a downer of a premise. The toys are in the toy box and have been there for years it seems. They are all that's left of all of Andy's toys throughout the years. They even mention losing some toys, like Bo Peep, who was voiced by Annie Potts in the first two movies, to yard sales. Funny!

Then it's discussed that Andy is going away to college. His Mom is giving away his room to his little sister, so he has to decide what to do with his stuff: take to college, put in storage or trash. He puts Woody in the college stuff and puts the toys in with the attic stuff, but when the toys accidentally get put on the curb with the trash, Woody acts to save them. In the confusion, they end up in the daycare donation stuff.

When they get to the daycare, it looks like all their troubles are solved. They are told by Lotso, the purple bear that leads the daycare, that they'll have a never ending stream of toys to play with, but then things quickly turn for the worse when they are locked in the wing for toddlers, who are much rougher on the toys in the bigger kids room. The toys then have to break out of the day care, which is run like a prison at night.

Eventually, it all culminates with Andy having to say goodbye to his toys as he's leaving for college.

I looked over at Laura while this was happening and she was wiping her eyes. She knew I was going to be looking over at her and she laughed while crying and muttered, "Stupid Pixar."

All in all, it was a pretty good Toy Story movie. I wouldn't call it my favorite. It was pretty funny, but the scenes near the end were rather bleak. Maybe repeated viewings will spruce it up. It still ranks up there with the other ones though. It has a lot of great performances from Lotso to Ken, who spends a lot of time insisting that he's not a girl's toy while trying on tons of outfits.

How Bill and I sound to others while on the phone to each other...

"Yo!" Bill said to me as he answered the phone the other day. He was with some people who were kind of listening to the one-sided conversation on his end. When he got off the phone, he was asked who he was on the phone with.

"My brother," Bill said.

"Yeah, I figured," one of them said. "I can always tell when he calls because you talk to him like an asshole."

I had to laugh at that because we've often been accused of doing nothing but arguing when we're together. It sounds like we're having a row, but that's just the way we communicate sometimes. We once rode in a car to Chicago with my wife, Laura to try out for a trivia show on VH1. We were all on the same team. After the trip, Laura stated emphatically that in no way would she ever ride with us on a trip again. It was all she could do to drown our arguing out.

That same week as my call to Bill in which he was considered rude by those listening in, Bill had called me from where he was on a business trip after he had gotten in for the night. I had just watched one of our favorite shows the night before, and we were discussing it. This usually involves a lot of "Remember the part when?" with one of us describing the joke and us laughing at it.

Laura calls is "reminiscing" about a show. I've tried to do this with her, but she doesn't have the whole twin link, so it usually bombs.

As I'm talking, I hear from the bedroom from Laura, "Why is she still up?"

I told Bill to hold on and walked over to the bedroom.

I told Laura that Julia was in bed and that I was talking to Bill on the phone.

She laughed and said, "Ohhhh! I thought you were talking to Julia because it sounded like you were talking to a child."

Is it free? Are you sure?

Trying a new strategy. Shorter blurbs of my life.

Today, we had a free lunch for those of us who worked on a new project. At first, I wasn't going to go to this lunch because I didn't realize that it wasn't just a lunch where you had to bring your own, but a free lunch, which I almost never turn down. You got to save money where you can these days...

So me and some other guys near me decide to go down to the free lunch. We stop at a co-worker's desk I'll call Ted.

"Are you going to go down to the lunch?" I asked.

"Umm... I don't know," he said skeptically. Ted isn't exactly keen on getting dragged to things he'll have to sit through.

"There's a free lunch..." I say slightly enticingly.

"What are they having?"

We said we didn't know, but I offered to call him at his desk once we got down there to tell him what it is.

We get down there. I open up the warming trays and survey the pickings. I pick up the phone and call Ted.

"It's fajitas. Chicken or Beef."

"And it's free?" Ted asks.

"Yes."

"Are you sure?" he asked skeptically.

Well I hadn't looked around, but I was fairly certain that there were no cash registers hidden to surprise us once we got our food and sat down.

"Yes, I'm pretty sure."

"Okay." He hung up.

All that trouble and he didn't even come.

I realize that's a pretty simple story....