"Zombie Apocalypse"

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In Zen Buddhism, there is a saying: "The hard stuff is easy. The easy stuff is hard."

Illuminating that saying from yet another angle, there is the on-going, cringing interest in the tale of a naked man who was shot dead in Miami as he ate the facial flesh of another naked man along a heavily-traveled highway on Saturday. The second man is said to be in critical condition in a hospital. Details are so sparse that the mind races to fill in the blanks ... why did this happen? why were both men naked? why did no one think to report a naked man along a highway before he leaped on his repast? Police are trying to piece the incident together and, I suspect, trying to iron out any wrinkles in the story about a police shooting of an unarmed (but apparently crazed) man. With so few facts, the mind races hither and thither ... it's all so awful, so weird, so delicious....

One Internet site summed up the deliciousness of curiosity and speculation this way:

Many across the nation continue to speculate that there is much more to the story. For example, why were BOTH men naked? How was the attacker able to take shots and still keep eating? Is this actually a Zombie Attack and thus possibly the beginning of the much feared/anticipated Zombie Apocalypse?

The "Zombie Apocalypse?" Whoa Mama! This is better than the TV programs that intone speculations about biblical prophecies or alien-oriented end-times! Ain't it (yum, yum, yum) awful?!

And woven into this mental tapestry is a thread that proclaims, "Things could be worse." Things could be worse and 'worse' is better -- more interesting, more consoling, more exciting -- than the daily grind ... the inescapable hard economic times, the wars that never seem to end, the dandelions that won't die, the job that provides income and saps the soul, the politicians' endless promises, the delights that turn to sorrow and back again, the intellectual and emotional Fiddle Faddle, the encroachments of old age and illness ... the drumbeat of the ordinary, expectable and easy stuff, the stuff that really can eat your face off.

Across the black and indifferent skies, a meteor of brilliant, magnetic horror streaks ....

Two naked men on a highway, one eating the other! Horrific! Unbelievable! Magnetic! It's ... it's... well (why not?), it's sign of the Zombie Apocalypse!

Sorta makes life worth living.

The hard stuff is easy. The easy stuff is hard.
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