WHY UNICORNS ARE BULL&$#%

I had a problem with my bathtub the other day. I usually get along well with my bathtub, which is from the 1930s, and extremely massive, and good at the task of hold water. These are excellent qualities in a tub! But the other day it decided it was going to hold water and NEVER, EVER LET IT GO. It wanted to be with this water forever.

My tub, because it is from the 1930s, is kind of weird. The stopper is this odd little contraption that sits outside of the tub. It looks like a little periscope that comes out of the floor, and you toggle it up or down, depending on what you want the water to do. I toggled and toggled and toggled, but the water remained. I poured drain opener into the tub. I did everything I could possibly think of, but I finally accepted that my tub was broken.

So I called my building supervisor to ask what could be done. He attempted to talk me through a repair. See, inside of the toggley-toggely thing is a thin rod that lifts and drops the stopper. It’s just a stopper on a stick, basically. So he had me pull this out and look at it.

And he said, “What does it look like on the other side?”

I looked at the rod.

“You mean on the bottom half?” I asked.

“No,” he said patiently, as if I was very, very stupid, “the other side.”

I looked at the rod some more. A rod is a stick. And a stick only has one side. Oh, sure, I mean technically there is some other side of a stick. There are probably INFINITE sides to a stick. But when you are dealing with something that thin, for all practical purposes it has one side—the stick side. Every way you look at it, you look at it from the stick side.*

So I explained that I could not follow this logic, because this stick was, from all perspectives, profoundly sticklike and there was no other side to talk about. This conversation went around and around for ten minutes, until I didn’t care anymore. I was worn and broken inside and fairly committed to seeing if I could climb into the kitchen sink for all of my future bathing needs. I was undone by this stick business.

Which brings me to unicorns.

I’m sure most of you by this point are aware of the zombie versus unicorn debate that RAGES ON online. The debate started in February 2007, between Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black. (Many people think that John Green started this. He did not. He later joined the discussion, as did I, both on the righteous side of zombies. But the whole thing started with Justine (zombies) and Holly (unicorns). This is the only known instance in which Holly Black has been wrong. You can read the history of the debate here and here and here and here. Credit for this great battle must be given where it is due.)

You probably thought this was over and everyone had accepted that zombies rule and unicorns are useless, but apparently not. There are still some people who think that unicorns have merit.

But of course, they do not. Unicorns are just stick-headed horses. Like the stick, they lack dimension.

Right now, some maniac, probably a maniac in lederhosen with lunchmeat on his head, is yelling, “It’s not a STICK! It’s a HORN!”

Listen up, my leather-shorted, meat-hatted friend . . . I would give unicorns the time of day if that “horn” was a good kind of horn, like this:



With that horn, I would welcome the unicorn and say, “Come here, little unicorn, have this bag of warm roughage.”

But no. In terms of head-ornaments, unicorns fall squarely into the stick category, even though the horns are technically cones . . . which is a statement that presents a number of geometrical challenges, I know, but we really need to move on and call a stick a stick.** (Or a CORN. Why don’t we call it a CORN, since they are unicorns?)

“But,” I have heard people say, “unicorns represented purity and chastity in the olden days! Therefore we should like them!”

The olden days? Like when you could sell a young girl to an old man to be his bride for three goats, a pound of flour, and some red cloth? You mean the olden days when they used to burn people for being witches? The olden days, when they would cover you in leeches whenever you sneezed? The olden days, when rats ruled the earth, and the ages are simply referred to as “dark”? ALL THE IDEAS THEN WERE BAD.



Good medicine from the unicorn days.

“What do you know?” some other random maniac asks. “Did you research this?”

No, I didn’t, and I don’t need to! Because what could be less useful than a stick on the head? What's there to research? Why don’t unicorns have something on their heads people would actually want, like a sandwich press, or a tire jack, or a nail file? Anything but a stick.

“So,” says the nay-sayer (there are obviously a lot of people out today who want to get involved in this discussion), “what’s so great about zombies, anyway?”

What ISN’T great about zombies is the real question!

But since I must start somewhere, I will say this: zombies are overachievers. As Simon Pegg wrote in his recent, brilliant article on zombies (which should be required reading for everyone, everywhere): “Death is a disability, not a superpower. It's hard to run with a cold, let alone the most debilitating malady of them all.”

This is part of his exquisite explanation of why zombies must be slow. It also explains why zombies are awesome. THEY ARE DEAD. But does that stop them? No, a thousand times no! They battle on against the ultimate case of the Mondays. You hit them? They get up! Kneecap them, shoot them, run them over with a car, and these precious creatures get right back up, because they are CHAMPIONS.

If only we could be more like zombies! We, who suffer daily the thousands of indignities of being alive, who have broken bathtubs and bad hair and sniffles and deadlines . . . we must keep getting back up, as our zombie friends do!

And why do the zombies shamble after us? Because they love us, is why. They want to hang with us. They want to be part of us. Sure, they express love by ripping you to bits and eating your insides, but who is to say that is completely wrong? Maybe it is just more love than we can handle, and whose fault is that?

And who has a greater appreciation of brains than zombies? No one. In fact, the only way you can stop a zombie is by destroying its head. It is as if the zombie is saying, “Without my thoughts, which are admittedly pretty simple, I am nothing.”

Zombies are also COMMUNICATORS, speaking in the universal language of grunts, moans, and hand gestures. When a zombie speaks, everyone understands. Zombies promote global unity and show that we are one people, and that we are all full of tasty insides.

Also, unlike zombies, unicorns are not real.

When will this battle end? How can we resolve our differences and get everyone on the right side of this argument?

Have thoughts? Leave them below. If they are pro-zombie, then they will be welcomed by all and you will be hailed as a hero of the people. If they are pro-unicorn, well . . . if you want to make a laughing stock of yourself and contribute the overall count of WRONG THINGS on the internet, I suppose you cannot be stopped. CHOOSE WISELY.

Also, enjoy this beautiful video made by Lauren Myracle, which features me and John Green! Just skip the opening and the end! Damn it feels good to be a ZOMBIE!




*Shut up, math majors, engineers, and science geeks, shut up shut up shut up. I know you want to say something here about the theoretical (or not-so-theoretical) possibilities of the sides of a cylinder, but you just have to fight that urge, do you hear me? FIGHT IT! Repeat after me: THERE IS ONLY ONE SIDE TO A STICK. I know you feel better.

**See above note for your reaction cues.