It's Important to Know Your Zones

 It's come to our attention that there's some confusion regarding zones. What they are, where they overlap, how much they score in scrabble, that kind of thing.

Therefore, because we're public spirited, here is a comprehensive list outlining the salient points of the zones that you should be aware of.

You're welcome.

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The Red Zone: 

Immediate loading and unloading of passengers. There is no stopping in the Red Zone. Passengers should be prepared to tuck and roll.

The White Zone:

Overt Racism.

The Twilight Zone:

Thoughtful allegorical storytelling, often outlining the dangers of the previous entry. Oh, and that one with Burgess Meredith where he wished all the other people away and then broke his glasses. Which is a totally fixable problem, by the way. There's plenty of glasses stores out there still. He could have found something that would have worked for him.

The Erogenous Zone:

This is between you and your God. And the occasional college lacrosse team. That's nobody's business. 

The Red Zone:

An area on the football field in which the Minnesota Vikings have no idea what to do, where to go, or which end is up. (That's American Football, for our international readership, which - again - can be loosely described as playing rugby while dressed up like a robot. It's been a rough season to be a Minnesota fan, but we did at least get a shout out on Ghosts a few weeks ago.)

The Danger Zone:

Can be reached by highway.

The Dead Zone:

Reasonably good book, terrible movie, awesome TV Series. Stephen King adaptations really are a minefield.

The Friend Zone:

It's not a real thing, dude. She just doesn't want to go out with you.

The Neutral Zone:

Arranged by negotiation with the Romulans, this region of space most never, ever be entered. Unless you feel like saying 'Screw it, we're entering the neutral zone', in which case you will suffer absolutely no consequences.

We hope that this information has been helpful. Stay in your Zone.

The Posts that almost were: Looking back through the Drafts Folder

 For some time now I've been toying with the idea of coming back to this blog and starting to post again.

Once the idea of coming back and posting again really took root, the first thing I did was to log in (because it's hard to post things if you don't) and take a look at the posts that I started, once upon a time, and never got around to finishing. It was more or less at this point that I got an idea.

Given that the odds of my going back and finishing any of the old posts are roughly the same as the odds of Nick Zano bursting abruptly out of my sternum and performing his one-man rendition of the complete works of Judy Blume*, I thought it might be fun to revisit the ones that got away and see how much, if anything, I remember about what they were going to be.

*No, I'm not going to explain either of those references. 

That said, let's dive in and see what might have been.

January 24th, 2000 - The Gayvengers:  Coming out to your superhero team

This one is the one that came closest to actually existing, because I was really enjoying the thought experiment.  Here's what actually got written - 

"So a while back I came across an interesting tidbit on Twitter.  Apparently, Marvel was making a big deal about announcing soon that one of their characters is gay.

Now, setting aside the fact that making this an advertising point is a little gross, MovieBob (who I follow on Twitter because I generally enjoy the things he posts) made the exact same point that I just did but phrased better, and then finished with this codicil-

"Also: am I the only one who 100% thought this was where the "Hawkeye keeps taking calls from 'the wife'" thing in ULTRON was going?"

Which was refreshing to read, because I thought that I was the only one who had thought that.

Which led me down a bit of a rabbit hole regarding why, if Clint was gay, he wouldn't have just come out to the Avengers early on and not made a big deal about it.

Yes, these are the kind of things I think about in the morning.  You're welcome.

The first relevant point would be that coming out is difficult and stressful regardless of your circumstances, so I can totally get why Clint might be a little hesitant to take that step."

And at that point I got distracted by something and never returned to it. Basically the rest was going to be a list format of the rest of the Avengers probably responses. Natasha: Totally fine, probably already knew. Tony: Completely disinterested but likely to ask uncomfortable personal questions just because he thought it was funny. Steve: probably would be super decent about it, but it would be much funnier if he turned out to have the default anti-gay bias on the 1940s and just started throwing out casual slurs while the rest of the team just looked at him like, 'WTF, dude?' and Steve would be all, 'What? We all still think that, right?' 

And then I would have worked in some manner of 'Hulk SMASH!  No... not in that sense of the word... I mean... Hulk like and all...." which I'm sure would have been hysterical.

April 22nd, 2014 - Sure, He Lost the Election.  But Look at Lincoln's Adorable Little Hands.

This was - and I swear I'm not just making this up now - going to be a re-telling of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1958, retold as if they were, respectively, a sea otter and a teacup pig.

The entire entry consists of the three words "To be continued." 

I think I realized even as I started that this was a little too high concept even for me and just walked away.

Still fun to picture it, though.

November 10th, 2015 - No, I Don't Want to Hug Justin Long

This post consists only of the sentence 'I'm not what you'd call an early riser. I'm more of a 'Lay there filled with dread about the day to come' kind of guy.

I have absolutely no idea what that has to do with Justin Long. I mean, it's still a true sentence, but your guess is as good as mine as to what the through-line was going to be there. Did I not want to go see Tusk? Was I feeling nostalgic about the old Mac versus PC commercial campaign? I have no idea.

Justin, on the off chance that you read this, I'd totally give you a hug. Bring it in buddy.

Which leaves us with:

January 25th, 2019 - This Land is Your Land - The Annotated Lyrics

October 12th, 2017 - Just When I Thought I Was Out They Pull Me Back In.... With Their Adorable Little Hands

and

March 13th, 2015 - A Treatise on Optics.  Oh OK, It's About That Dress Again.

None of these three have a single word written beyond the title. 

The third one was clearly going to be something about that dress that was either blue and black or white and gold and got the whole internet worked up. The middle one was probably about otters. The final entry has sadly been completely lost to time.

And there they are. The posts that never were. I hope you enjoyed our little jaunt through alternate history. As I hit delete on the drafts folder of might-have-beens and never-was', let's make an effort to meet back up here tomorrow and start something new.

There's a non-zero chance that it will be about otters again. We'll see.