No Such Thing as an Amish Zombie

A recent Huffington Post article said this:

"The horror genre in general has always been a reflection of our social anxieties. … In the wake of 9/11, zombie narratives have increased dramatically, which isn't surprising considering the concerns in our culture since then -- SARS, bird flu, chemical weapons and the radicals and extremists with whom you can't reason and you can't negotiate."

I’m afraid I cannot disagree. I DO agree that horror narratives address popular fears. If nothing else, horror stories are akin to urban legends, tapping into anxieties and giving them fangs. The end result is a catharsis, based ironically in survival (yes, I am claiming that surviving is the real horror. More on that another time).

What I don’t agree with is this idea that the particular fears that Zombies embody are influenza, biological warfare, and terrorism. None of these, in my mind, align with the horror that a slow shuffling field of teeth-chomping brain eaters evoke. However, those three things do, sort of, have something in common that I think DOES resonate with zombies: government hubris.

I’ve talked about it here before (or at least I’ve meant to) this idea that when the zombie apocalypse comes, it will be the devastation to infrastructure that spells mankind’s doom. Communication breakdowns, service and product distribution failures, and worst of all, patriotism begetting factionalism. Us versus them will lump anyone who isn’t in your immediate pack or clan a “them.”

In other words, zombies represent our fear of internet dependence. Yes, it’s as simple as that. If the lights go out, if we can’t Facebook and Amazon and Fantasy Football and Fox News, then we’ll have to look at ourselves. Looking at ourselves means everyone else is, basically, not us, and paranoia means they’re all jealous of our brains and want to eat us, whole. 

You think I’m silly, but mark my words. The only people in the world who are unafraid of zombies are the Amish.

The Zombies are Coming… Tomorrow

With no apologies or explanation I am announcing that Zombie for Life will now be updated only weekly. 

Weakly?

Oh shut up. I’m turning into a zombie myself with all this writing. That’s me, shuffling after sentences, gurgling “blogs.” The whole point was to “promote” my book of short stories. But writing these posts has gotten to be more fun than that. Yeah, I wind up waxing pseudo-philosophical, but then I like to hear myself talk. No zombie can say that! Or say anything! Cause they don’t talk!

Anyhow, I got other blogs going weekly now too, so I have arbitrarily decided Thursday will be Zombie day. Until it isn’t. Or until I get some more energy and write up a whole mess of stuff too good to hold onto.

In the meantime (or until tomorrow I guess) here’s some zombie quotes. I Googled “best quotes” and it gave me a bunch of quotes with the word “best” in them, so exchanged the word “best” with “zombie” and these turned out to be all true.

• In the practice of tolerance, one's enemy is the zombie teacher. --Dalai Lama 
• The only real failure in life is not to be true to the zombie one knows. --Buddha 
• The zombie road to progress is freedom's road. --John F. Kennedy 
• Learn to say 'no' to the good so you can say 'yes' to the zombie. --John C. Maxwell 
• I am easily satisfied with the zombie. --Winston Churchill 
• I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the zombie. --Oscar Wilde 
• He who knows zombie knows how little he knows. --Thomas Jefferson 
• But men are men; the zombie sometimes forget. --William Shakespeare 
• Why don't you start believing that no matter what you have or haven't done, that your zombie days are still out in front of you. --Joel Osteen 
• Expect the zombie. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes. --Zig Ziglar

Grr, arrgh.

What is Zombie-Ness

Imagine you’re at Zombie Con. All around you, people are enjoying themselves. They’re buying and selling merchandise, discussing movies and TV shows, playing games and fantasizing about the ultimate zombie stronghold. Here and there, you see individuals shuffling in tattered clothes, skin a sickly green, oozing wounds dripping, faces half-torn off.

You feel a touch on your shoulder. Just a simple tap. And now you have the uncontrollable urge to tap someone else on the shoulder. So you do, and for a moment, the urge goes away… only to bubble up inside you again. You must tap someone else on the shoulder. So you find someone else, and it’s the same thing… the urge goes way, but then comes on again. But the next person you see, well, you don’t feel like tapping that person. You barely notice that this person, too, is about to tap someone on the shoulder. You ignore that person, move towards the one he’s going to tap, and tap that person too. There’s no sense of competition—it’s just fresh meat to tap.

In the above, who are the “zombies”? Is it the people dressed up to look like the lurching undead, with their facsimiles of blood and gore and decay? Or is it the ones who can’t help but do what they do, and in doing so, make other people do it too?

I was thinking about this idea of what “zombie-ness” is. Since zombies aren’t actually real, there are two kinds of “zombieness.” There’s all the trapping and tropes, the things that make Zombie walks and Zombie cons so much fun. It’s that veneer if zombieness we’ve talked about ad-nauseum on this blog before.

Its like Angry Birds Star Wars. What is “Star-Wars-Ness?” Ostensibly, it’s a shiny black helmet, cinnamon-buns on the side of the head, a glowing stick, and big orb half-constructed. Those things can be used to dress up the Angry Birds.

But they don’t tell the story—they only work if you already know the story. Whereas the shoulder-tapping scenario is very zombie-like, but without all those tropes and trappings.

But are the two even separable? Yes, if we can have people dress up like zombies without requiring them to be dead and actually feed on people. On the other hand, the shoulder-tappers. Are they really zombies?

I’ll let you know at Shoulder-Tapper Con, where people trade elongated foam fingers, wear shoulder pads, and discussing movies like Night of The Living Interrupters.

Here Come the Gut Gobblers

With requisite apologies to Tennyson.

Half a step, half a step, half a step shuffling,
All on the highway of death lurched the gut gobblers.
"Here come the flesh eaters! Shoot for the brains!" was said:
Onto the highway of Death lurched the gut gobblers.
"Here come the flesh eaters!" Was there a brain there saved?
No, tho' the living knew someone had fuck’d up:
Zombs to make no reply, zombs not to reason why,
Zombs but to lurch and dine: onto the highway of Death
Lurched the gut gobblers.
Shotgun to right of them, crossbow to left of them,
Hand axe in front of them splurching brains sunder'd;
Storm'd up from a gritty smell, moldy they lurched and well,
Snapping their jaws of death, tongue stuck in mouths of Hell
Lurched the gut gobblers.
Flash'd all those blasts where flash'd as they blasted heads,
Sabring the gobblers there, beheading armies, while
All the world wonder'd: Plunged in the ‘pocalypse
Right thro' the line they broke; survivors falling
Reel'd from the shotgun blasts shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they fell down, but not the gut gobblers.
Shotgun to right of them, crossbow to left of them,
Hand axe in front of them splurching brains sunder'd;
Storm'd at with bow and shell, while each survivor fell,
Though they had fought so well came thro' the jaws of zombs
Up with those mouths of Hell, all that was left of them,
Left of gut gobblers.
Where next the gory blade? O the wild feasts they made!
All the world wondered. Fear the gore they made,
Flee from those awful zombs, hungry gut gobblers.

Tires vs. Zombies

Inexorable, it seeks prey and when it finds prey it is unrelenting. I’m talking about a virus. It invades a cell, uses what’s inside the cell to reproduce itself, and the cell is destroyed when all of those copies burst out, each seeking more prey.

The analogy to zombies is not precise. One zombie grabs at a helpless victim, tears into her flesh and begins consuming, but this does not lead to several zombies bursting out. For the analogy to work, we would need on zombie invading a “cell” containing several humans, and the result is several zombies bursting out of the mall or the safehouse or whatever.

(This, by the way, is why I always scoff when people post picture on the internet of their “zombie strongholds.” Hard to get in means hard to get out, and all it takes is one zombie to make that stronghold a gut-gobbler factory).

What’s more, it’s not that a virus goes into a cell and then uses the material inside to make copies—the virus uses the cell’s actual mechanisms to facilitate the reproduction process. The zombie-in-your-safehouse analogy then would suggest that its not just that the zombie turns people into zombies, but that the social dynamics of the group lend themselves to zombie making. Bickering distracts folks from maintaining the stronghold, falling in love makes it hard to put a shotgun to the head of a newly turned zombie, etc.

So the analogy is not a bad one, it just needs adjustment to work. And the consequence of a working analogy is, how does it inform a solution to a zombie problem? Well, your body will elevate its own temperature to kill of a virus. In other words, it makes the host inhospitable. How would we do that in the real world?

I have no idea. In World War Z, people with fatal diseases were unappetizing to zombies. But that breaks out analogy- we need the host, the cell, the mall, to be in hospitable.

I’ve got it—tires. Like those tires you step into and out of quickly an obstacle course. Line the roads with tires! The living have agility—the dead don’t. They’ll fall all over themselves. It would take weeks for them to move a few city blocks.

This is brilliant. I’m applying for the MacArthur Genius Grant. I may have eradicated the need for zombie fiction forever.

Oh no.

The Nine Kinds of Zombies

Note: someone brought a copy of “The Wisdom of the Enneagram” to my house this last weekend. This has nothing to do with that, I swear.
There are lots of different zombies types out there, and when you’re fighting for scarce resources against evil representatives of the still-living, a zombie-by-zombie analysis is probably a waste of time. So here’s a handy guide I just made up based on nothing but a few tropes. Usefulness = 2/10

The Horde Former: HF zombies believe the essences of zombiedom lies in the horde, a tight group of shuffling gut-gobblers in slow inexorable pursuit of their prey. HF zombies know there’s safety in numbers, and will refuse to pursue a straggler on their own, even if it’s in their best interest. HF zombies can be thwarted by hiding in spaces where only individual zombies can go—tight alleyways, partially blockaded doorways, etc.

The Yelper: the Yelper is the first zombie to notice a new victim, and to make some kind of sound to alert other zombies in the area. This alert, however, will alert the new victim that she’s been seen. In this way, The Yelper is an early-warning system when the living are on stealth missions. If you see a Yelper, take it out first, and quietly, and you might avoid detection

The Massive Bleeder: The MB Zombie typifies all of the visual cues associated with an obvious undead presence: half-bashed-in face, open sores, intestines spilling from the gut. What the MB zombie lacks in mobility and longevity, it makes up for in shock value—living who come into contact with an MB zombie can become stunned into immobility, making them easy pickings for other zombies.

The Silent Surprise: this zombie is the one who seems to come out of nowhere, when victims least expect it. SS zombies take advantage if bickering-to-distraction amongst the living, in the best-case-scenarios, wind up taking a big bite out of the asshole with the loudest mouth. Avoid SS zombies by always being vigilant and taking no safety measure for granted.

The Curious: the Curious zombie can often be found alone, wandering, seemingly aimlessly, more given to distraction than the other zombies. This is the zombie who will first respond to diversions when you need to move the zombies out of a sensitive area or towards some kind of trap. Don’t be fooled, however; just because a Curious zombie is looking at the bucket of guts your waving and not your throat, he’ll still go for your flesh if you get too close.

The Slowest: the slowest zombie always lags behind the horde, is always last to the kill, and is always last to get up. In this way they can be the easiest to get away from, but at the same time, they can be too easily forgotten about. Keep your heads counts and kill shot counts as accurate as possible, or the late-arriving Slowest zombie will surprise you just as you let your guard down.

The Unrelenting: the Unrelenting zombie just never quits. This is the one you see shuffling along on one very broken ankle, or pulling herself along by just her arms, body ripped in half. Whereas with other zombies a kill-shot seems obvious, with Unrelenting zombies you can never be sure: spike the brain, cut off the head, and burn the whole thing. Even then, don’t breathe the fumes. Just don’t.

The Gallagher: this zombie is crazy and unpredictable. You’ll find yourself watching this zombie instead of killing as it shuffles about, bouncing off of walls, trying to eat tires, and other crazy hijinx. But don’t be fooled—when this zombie finally decides to go in for the kill, the results will splatter everyone with blood and gore. When facing the Gallagher zombie, just put it out of its misery as soon as possible.

The Quintessential: this is the prototypical, platonic, perfect zombie. It has exactly the right color fo grayish greenish skin. It has the right number of small but obvious open, oozing wounds. The right amount of blood dripping from its mouth. It doesn’t walk or run, but moves at a pace somewhere in between. The beauty of the quintessential zombie extends from its unlife to its undeath- they are always killed with a perfect shot-gun blast to the head, usually by the least experienced survivor in the group, and there’s always a satisfying splash of brain matter as they gracefully fall down in slow motion. But beware: there’s never not any quintessential zombies. So long as we keep the zombie thing alive, these zombies will always exist.

Zombies Love Tryptophan.

Zombies used to say “brains” and that was what they were after. Just brains. But then modern-zombies started eating the whole person. There’s a huge difference there. My theory is that while older zombies went after our “moral” cores, the new zombies go after our “identity’ cores.

At the end of Night of the Living Dead, a bunch of rednecks have some zombies strung up from a tree, and are shooting at them. Barbra is visibly disgusted. These barbarians are no better than the mindless brain eaters that had earlier terrorized a house full of survivors. The barbarians are just as brainless, or a-moral, as the zombies.

But you’re modern zombie film or TV show is about guts. Do the characters have the guts to do what needs to be done to survive? Or will they give in to a false sense of themselves, the person they “used” to be, and in the process, be taken down by a hungry horde of intestine-gobblers?

Here’s the key, and the cheap thanksgiving tie-in: Tryptophan. The tryptophan in turkey, and most meats, most protein-possessing foods, gets converted in your body into serotonin. Ninety percent of that stays in your gut. So when the zombies eat your guts, they’re getting a nice fat dose of serotonin. And since they’re brains don’t work so good, that serotonin stays in their gut, too.

They eat it so that their guts will keep working, allowing them to eat more. This circle is the core of they’re identity. Not eat to live, or live to eat, but eat to eat. Juxtaposed to that is the survivors. They eat to live, of course, but their vicious circle is about survival. They survive to survive.

And what’s survival but evading death? And what’s death but the big sleep? And what’s serotonin but the sleep transmitter? And what’s serotonin but what is made out of tryptophan? And what’s tryptophan but the amino acid that comes from Turkey? And what’s turkey but the result of “living to eat?”

Thanksgiving is a day to be thankful that we can choose who we want to be: Gluttons. Even zombies don’t get to choose that.

Would a Zombie Eat a Turkey?

Basically, from the neck down, there isn’t much difference between people and animals. So when zombies were eating just brains, we could see why they weren’t eating animals—there was something about human brains they wanted. But now that they’re eating everything, why aren’t they eating everything?

The more I think about it, the more I have to conclude its because people are everywhere. Or, people are where people are. When a person becomes a zombie, he is in place where there were people. There’s probably a term for this in virology. Like target-rich environment, or close-sector vectoring, or something.

And it might also be the case that animals can’t turn into zombies. I know this has been treated in a few zombie movies. Help me remember—did 28 Days Later have zombie dogs? I can make an excuse for that—dogs are basically humans, when it comes to social structures, especially human ones.

Either or, we could say that the only reason zombies aren’t eating animals is because there are no animals around. They would, like in the first episode or The Walking Dead, when they ate that horse. Would a zombie eat a turkey? Would it make the zombie sleepy?

No, and no, I say. No because they would not recognize it as food, or sentient, for that matter. Turkeys have a reported IQ of -10. I am not making that up. They’re basically plants with feathers. No, worse than that. Plants at least don’t drown in the rain. Turkeys will stare at the sky when it rains until their gullets fill with water and they keel over.

Yes, all of that comes from myths that are as perennial as the “eating turkey makes you sleepy” trope. But zombies are fictional too. I can put turkey tropes in my zombie world if I want. And in that world, turkeys are stupid and safe from zombie attacks. They're symbols of a world where there are no shuffling gut gobblers.

In that world, people gather once a year to appreciate just being alive. Then they chase down a turkey, rip it to shreds, and devour it in greasy bites just because that's what zombies wouldn't do.

That's what thanksgiving means to me.

(not) Zen and the (not) Art of (not) Zombies

Today on my way to work I passed a neon sign with a girly devil face on it, an art and design studio of some kind, called “Zombies.” Art and design, I will remind. Girly devil face, I will remind you.

Let’s do some meta-analysis. There’s “classical” which is the idea that truth is beauty and beauty truth, that there’s an underlying universal structure to things. Then there’s “modern” which is the idea that there’s no underlying universal structure, only the structures we create. Then “post-modern,” which says not even the structures we make have any structure. ‘Post-post modern” would be “Ironic,” and so would say there are structures after all, but only in a lack of structure, and “Post-Ironic” says nevermind structure at all, just be.

That’s glib, but sue me if you don’t think a person who never took a single philosophy, art history, or music survey course has any business talking about this stuff. This is a zombie blog, for Romero’s sake.

Let’s apply my glibness to zombie history. Start with the first zombie movie, call that classical. Then the first zombie apocalypse move, call that modern. Then the first zombie movie where people are killing each other more than zombies are, call that post-modern. Post-post or ironic would be all of this zombies stuff we’re experiencing now, zombies in commercial, cute zombies on T-shirt, zombies as metaphors.

Post-ironic zombies, then, just are. The zombie art and design studio doesn’t try to do anything to discuss the zombie “thing,” to further any kind if understanding. It’s pseudo-zen. It’s returning the word to the very core of existence—just a word, devoid of connotation, barely even a label. A sound stuck on a wall over an image next to a place where they… well, I don’t know what they do. And so I don’t know what they do, I don’t even know if they exist.

There’s cartoon out there on the web, showing four zombies at a dinner table. One says “I've always thought of zombies as representing a pervasive American xenophobia.” The next says “Really, I’ve always considered us a metaphor for runaway consumerism.” The next one says, “There’s something to the idea that we illustrate the tenuous line between civilization and barbarism.” The last zombie thinks to himself “I feel really stupid for ordering brains now…”

“Xenophobia” is the classical concept. “Consumerism” is modern. “Barbarism” is post-modern. Ordering brains, and the cartoon itself is “ironic.” This blog post is post-ironic. Get it now?

Yeah, me neither.

5 Reasons People Who Listen to Surf Guitar Will Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

Have you read “5 Reasons Independent Filmmakers Will Survive a Zombie Apocalypse” yet? Basically, it pays homage to the new Zombie Genre, pokes fun at Walking Dead fanboys, and then uses a zombie survival ethos to describe how great independent film makers (IFMs) are. IFMs: Work well in teams, are great problem solvers, aim for the head, are resourceful, and aren’t afraid to get down and dirty.

I gotta say, I kind of like where this is going. This idea to use a zombie ethos to lionize some person or organization or gestalt. I want to try my hand at it. So, here are my 5 Reasons People Who Listen to Surf Guitar Will Survive the Zombie Apocalypse:

Lots of Energy: surf guitar is frenetic, explosive at times, non-stop, unrelenting. These are the perfect ingredients for staying on the run when zombies are on the loose, chasing people down and devouring whole the slower ones.

Willing to Make their Own Way: surf guitar ain’t top 40, ain’t pop, ain’t showing up an any oldies station, is barely even touched by College radio or the Hipster Underground. People who like surf guitar are fiercely loyal, and don’t mind at all that they can’t cram themselves into the rescue shelters, repurposed stadiums, or other hell-holes that fall apart under their own broken infrastructure and become feeding troughs to the zombie hordes. 

In Tune with Deeper Rhythms: Surf guitar is about reverb, feedback, fuzz, and licks played so fast it breaks picks. But underneath all of that is a driving rhythm that holds it all together, a sense of time that surf lovers never lose in the noise. When chaos breaks out and zombies are running amok, when everyones gone completely banana bonkers, surf guitar lovers will hang on to the pulse of humanity and ride out the storm.

A Sense of History and Respect for Current Movements: Surf guitar got its start in the early sixties, and only the most cynical poser doesn’t still love Dick Dale, the Ventures, and the Chantays. But you can’t surf unless you get yourself some Laika and the Cosmonauts, some Man or Astro-Man? And some Daikaiju. When the zombies come and tear apart our world, it’s the surf guitarists who will remember Who We Used to Be, and keep that spirit alive even as they help build a New World of Hope.

Intense Survivability: Have you been to a surf guitar concert? They’re loud. They’re played in small venues which means all that loudness is packed into a tiny space. They’re dark. They’re full of teenager and guys in the 60s thrashing around wildly. They’re full of cheap beer and cheaper whiskey. The women at surf guitar concerts are tough as nails and will give you a black eye either to shut you up or demonstrate their love for you. In the mad rush of idiots running from the zombies who are ripping them to shreds, it’s the surf guitar fans who will hang in there with the best of em. You though the zombie was scary? Just try and take down a surf guitar fan, I double dog Dick Dale dare you.

 Okay, now it’s your turn. Send me your 5 reasons your favorite thing shows how someone will survive the zombie apocalypse.

A Negative Review of a Zombie-Related Thing.

Quick n dirty zombie blog post today because I am way behind and trying to get stuff done. Think of this as a make-shift zombie-killing weapon, like a chainsaw duct-taped to a baseball bat or something.

An article popped up on my radar, over at the Boston Globe, called “Zombie-proof your home.” The gist is that, since the zombie thing happens due to some virus, you can save yourself by making your home a place where a virus can’t get in or propagate.

I’m a big defender of “let people use zombies to do/sell/describe whatever” but here, I have to draw a line. There’s nothing zombie-useful in this article. It describes how you have to, basically, control air quality in order to avoid the zombie virus. Its zombie pictures throughout. But it doesn’t say a word about what will REALLY get you:

Teeth. Grasping hands ripping into your flesh. Other humans fighting you over scarce resources. Depression and doom.

Now, if this was an article about making your home cleaner, with a zombie theme, that would be fine. But none of this is useful in the real world either. No one’s going to tape up their house just to avoid the indignities of cold and flu season.

Taping up your house and hacking an air pressure system, if anything, is only fit for folly: I can imagine some guy in a zombie movie go to all of this trouble to keep the “virus” out of his lungs, only to have a horde of shuffling gut chuggers rip his duct-tape-and-plastic-wrapped windows to shreds as they devour his family.

The post mentions the Walking Dead too, but I can’t complain about that, since I do it all the time myself. Suffice it to say that, much like this post right here, I get the feeling this was slapped together in a pinch just to get on that zombie train.

Giving the Gift of Zombies

Today is my birthday, and I’ve already written about a blog post for The Great Brain Robbery about the effects of “giving” on the brain. (It makes the brain feel good-- perhaps instead of eating people zombies should work for the Make a Wish Foundation). So why not do the same for the zombie blog? So I Googled “giving the gift of zombies.”

First hit: the Zombie Cafe wiki, a post on how to gift food to your friends’ refrigerators. Intriguing. So I looked up the game itself-- its Diner Dash, with zombies.

So add this as another brick in the wall of “zombies are everywhere.” However, I’m not complaining. My own book, Still Life, with Zombie, takes this approach. Even if a thing simply puts a zombie “skin” on something, I’m calling it legit.

Right now, you can get all kinds of Star Wars Lego things. Is this “Star Wars?” That’s not a rhetorical question. You have to decide for yourself. If you call yourself “hard-core” and you claim to be a “purist,” you might have reached the point where your identity includes sneering disparagement of all this brand-abuse. But zombies, see, they’re not a brand. Go ahead, get mad when they make Walking Dead Legos (and I just drooled at the thought of that, so you know where I stand).

Merely slapping a zombie skin on something, as a marketing technique, is fine, and is no different than the way Hooters brings in customers to eat bland burgers. Sex sells, and so do the undead. But we don’t call Hooters a brothel, and we don’t claim Zombie Cafe adds to zombie lore.

So go ahead and play Zombie Cafe if you want, and if people sneer at you for doing so, just remember, they do it to define themselves, and it has nothing to do with you. That’s my gift to you today. Enjoy!

Can Zombies Feel Pain?

Dr. Dratoc is having a nice, relaxing cup of coffee in his favorite café, Sodium. He likes the place because it doesn’t get a lot of business, probably because of its name. He’s often alone in there, and has his choice of seats. Usually he sits in the back, away from the windows. Working in a hospital gives him plenty of opportunities for people watching, so when he’s at Sodium, he likes to face the wall and zone out, just forget everything for a while.

Today he’s thinking about as little as possible as he sips his cinnamon mocha. Caffeine and L-theanine, good for what ails you, and what ails Dr. Dratoc is overabundance of stimulation.

“Ouch!” he says suddenly, before he evenly realizes his hand is burning. He looks down at the spilled coffee on the table. Man, that smarts. Afferent nerves working as evolved, he thinks, looking up. He sees a man shuffling away, the one who bumped into his table. “Excuse you,” Dratoc says, a little peeved.

The man turns around, eyes glazed, a deep, bleeding gash in his forehead, blood running over broken teeth and dripping on the floor. He reaches a hand up, mumbles “braaiii” and takes a step towards Dratoc.

“Damn it,” Dratoc mutters. And Sodium used to be such a nice place.

~~~

Congenital analgesia, or congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP), is a very rare condition that afflicts only a handful of people in the world at any one time. People with CIP don’t experience pain, although they can feel heat, cold, and pressure on their skin. This is opposed to CIP with anhidrosis, where the sufferer feels almost nothing except pressure on the skin.

Science still isn’t sure exactly how nerve endings send different signals for pain, temperature, pressure, and other sensations, although CIP does appear to be an affliction of the brain, and not of the nerve endings themselves. In a sense, people with CIP do have pain, they just don’t know it.

Congenital analgesia is usually an inherited condition, although there are cases reported where it was theorized that a malfunctioning excess of endorphins mitigated pain reception. It can be very dangerous to have, since feeling pain is an evolved survival technique, and suffers are at risk of sustaining life ending injuries without being aware of it.

Fortunately, people with CIP do not usually suffer from any other defects; while they don’t feel pain, they do grow and heal as normal.

~~~

Dr. Dratoc kneels over the now recumbent man, listening to the distant but approaching wail of an ambulance. He reads the man’s medical bracelet. “Congenital Analgesia. Please alert a medical professional if I am bleeding freely.” Well no duh.

The barista, dreads, goatee, ironic t-shirt and all, emerges from the bathroom with a green face. “Blood everywhere, man. Not cool, not cool. It’s all over the sink, all over the Dyson Airblade hand dryer, man.”

“He probably slipped on the wet tiles, poor guy. Banged his head pretty good, put him in a daze. I’m surprised he was able to walk out of there at all.”

“Aw geez, ya think he’s going to sue?”

Dr Dratoc shrugs. “If he even remembers what happened,” he says, looking at the burn on his own hand and wincing. “They say experiencing pain can enhance the making of memories. This guy probably won’t remember a thing.” Dratoc blows on his hand, although the pain won’t go away. “Must be nice.”

Are Zombies Evil? Yes, We Are

It’s Philosophy Thursday (which I just made up as an excuse to write about something. I probably won’t even remember to do this again, and next week I’ll declare “It’s Zombie Tacos with Too Much Cilantro Thursday!” although, to be honest, I have no idea what that would even be. But that’s the great thing about making up stuff about stuff that’s made up: I can say just about anything I want.). So let’s talk about evil.

Are zombies evil? The word “evil” has connotations of viciousness and cruelty, of sadistic delight in another’s misery or suffering. It has connotations of apathy, as well as selfishness, a love of destruction, chaos, heartlessness and oppression. 

Central to all of those concepts is a theme of will, which is to say, a conscious desire and drive. I think we can all agree that while zombies have a desire and a drive-- specifically to consume flesh in great bloody chunks, gore dripping from their jaws even as they shamble in ripped clothes, wounds oozing, towards their next victim—this is not a conscious desire.

Indeed, as we’ve talked about before, the word zombie is used in philosophy to define an entity that does not have consciousness but is otherwise unidentifiable from an entity that does have consciousness (which is why I disparage the usage because if there are two people standing there and you don’t which is the zombie and which isn’t, you’re in big trouble—not to mention the non-zombie person, who’s about to get eaten).

And yet, it’s easy to apply such consciousness to zombies, even if we know they’re dead, albeit inappropriately mobile and deadly in that death. Look at one of the words I used above: “victim.” It’s easy to say the zombie is seeking another “victim,” and with that scenario in mind we can easily suggest such hunger is “evil.” Rationally we dismiss it, but our gut wants to attribute a foul Theory of Mind (look it up. It’s a psychology term, but whatever).

The take away from all of this is that a zombie attack is different from, say, an earthquake, even if you could style a movie based on ether, if you’re going to focus on survivors competing with survivors. In each scenario, rationally, there’s no “will” that cause society to break down. But since we can’t help but to “feel” that the zombies are evil, it changes the way we survive at all—by being evil to other survivors. 

My suggestion is that we individual living humans see reflected in the zombies our own evil, and I contend the reflection is all the sharper for the realization that zombies are not actually evil. We use zombies to justify cruelty and selfishness, and when we think on what we’ve done compared to mindless shufflers with no actual consciousness, we either kill ourselves out of guilt, or embrace the evil and take delight in the suffering of others.

Damn it, this got WAY deeper than I meant it to. I didn’t even get to discuss how I think the above definition of “evil” isn’t even correct (although I stand by the concepts posited here if man’s innate selfishness and love of cruelty). Fine, next week, I WILL talk about tacos. Or something. Man oh man, it’s going to be a long Thursday.

Top Ten Reasons to Buy My Book(s)

Trying to justify in that great big brain of yours why you should spend three dollars and ninety five cents on my book, Still Life, With Zombie? Here are ten reasons. I guarantee one of these will apply to you.

1. You’re a doctor on your way to Puerto Rico to help treat people who have been taking xylazine recreationally, and it’s turning them into mindless, shambling horrorshows. You need something light to read on the plane.

2. Your Husband or wife or brother or mother is TOTALLY into zombies, and you need a nice introduction to what’s the big deal.

3. You’re a discerning reader, given to an eclectic approach to collecting book experiences. You enjoy deep, thoughtful prose as well as more effervescent, playful stuff.

4. You just got a Kindle, or any of the many, many devices that can run a Kindle app, and you want to inaugurate your acquisition with something that the critics are calling… well, who cares what the critics say. You’re more discerning than those fools anyway.

5. You’ve come across this blog, and you want to see if the brilliance you’re reading here is matched by similar brilliance in book form.

6. You just love you some zombies. You’ll take ‘em any way you can get ‘em. Barbecued, boiled, broiled, baked, sautéed, zombie-kabobs, zombie creole, zombie gumbo, pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried, pineapple zombie, lemon zombie, coconut zombie, pepper zombie, zombie soup, zombie stew, zombie salad, zombie and potatoes, zombie burger, zombie sandwich….

7. You’ve seen all the zombie movies, all the zombie TV shows, played all the zombie video games… and now you want to know if a zombie book can hold its own against such juggernauts of zombie awesomeness.

8. You want to support a struggling, self-published writer who genuinely believes that talent and hard work have nothing to do with success, while the number of times he writes “shuffling, gut-feasting blood-hungry undead” will have a positive impact on SEO.

9. You heard from a good friend that there’s a secret code of some kind buried in some zombie book somewhere. Something to do with that Joss Whedon zombie movie that SHOULD be made, god damn it.

10. Razors don’t stop them; rivers don’t drown; acids won’t drop them; and drugs? Get outta town. Guns aren’t quiet; nooses work… till they’re freed; gas starts riots; You might as well read.

Philisophical Zombie Abuse

I’ve mentioned it before but it bears repeating: brain research leads to zombie culture. Once again, while researching and writing for the Great Brain Robbery, I came across another reference to zombies.

Can’t say I agree with the assessment offered, this time. 

“In director George Romero’s 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead, terrified people trapped in a Pennsylvania farmhouse try to survive zombies hungry for human flesh. 

But real zombies aren’t like that, …. The word ‘zombie’ is a surprisingly technical term, introduced by philosopher David Chalmers.

This is very misleading. First of all, there are no such thing as “real” zombies. In as much as philosophers have taken the word zombie to as a metaphor to describe beings in a thought experiment, they’re as real as anything else you can think up. For zombie lovers, every zombie move is a thought experiment; every video game is a “what would you do” scenario. Reality = zero.

Nor is “zombie” a technical term. It’s a metaphor. Its descriptive—and in every introduction to thought experiments that use “zombies,” there’s by needs a lengthy explanation of what that means. Then the “term” is as “technical” as any other co-opted word.

And of course. David Chalmers may have “introduced” the use of the word, but not the word itself. As any dedicated undead enthusiast already knows, the word comes from Haitian Creole, “zonbi,” which itself probably comes from an older word “nzumbe” which means “ghost.” Interesting, isn’t it, that the above article claims “Consciousness is definitely the modern conception of the soul” and then tries to confound a “soulless” being with a word that originates from the concept of the soul itself.

But, you know, that’s what we’ve been saying here at Zombie for Life: zombies are a thing. Zombies are here to say. People are going to use the word in metaphors, co-opt the term in new nomenclatures, and in general, abuse the concept like an erstwhile apocalypse survivor abusing trusted colleagues, while outside the brain eaters bar him in from precious resources.

The Zombies News is a Horde, No, Really!

Don’t know if you now this but I am one of the people who contribute to The Great Brain Robbery, a blog that discusses brain research. I read a dozen blogs every day until I find something I want to talk about, and then I talk about it, and then I shake my head out how little we know.

And I am amazed at how many times the subject of zombies comes up. Not just because zombies eat brains! Zombies really are a thing, they’re everywhere, they’re in the annals of scientific discourse. I mean, talk about a metaphor eating its way through the flesh of innocent subjects, sheesh.

There’s this story, about the uncanny valley, which is a metaphor for our comfort with life-like robots. At first we’re okay with ‘em, but as they get more human-like we get creeped out, and then we’re okay again. It’s in the eyes specifically, according to the research, which is why zombies eyes can be made to terrify us before they even drool blood and gurgle a request for our intestines.

And then there was this story, which led me to the source of “Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency (I wrote about that a few weeks ago). Again, found it from a brain blogger. He also provided this: How World War Z Should Have Ended.

I could dedicate a whole blog post to any one of these. But I have one on Zombie children in Africa, Zombies in Puerto Rico, and one on necrotizing fasciitis to write (all of which will feature Dr. Dratoc, by the way). There’s too much!

A few weeks ago I switched from two posts a day to one, and I was thinking about dropping to three times a week. But then they’ll get me. The zombie news will crash through this brittle walls, rip me to shred and consumer my quivering flesh. I am literally shaking right now. Ignore that coffee cup. I am literally shaking!

Running After Zombies Running After Me

Went for a run this morning, to practice for when the zombies come. Long runs can make a runner better at sprinting, although sprinting will not improve your long run. I’m sure there’s research out there somewhere that says so, and even if not, I can make up whatever I want since we’re talking about zombies anyway.

Passed a sign for the Monster Dash, a 5k run those goes up and down the Interurban trail in Shoreline. Gnashing of teeth and wailing, I wanted to do that run! Last year I saw the signs post-run as well, and thought I’d take part this year. Then I forgot. Now I’ll be seeing the spray-painted directions on the asphalt when I do my jogs for the next six months, like last time.

But it got me to thinking about runs and zombies, how they go hand in hand. Zombie runs all over the shop. And I keep missing them. There’s The Zombie Run, which used to be “Run for Your Lives.” Tomorrow is the Dawn of the Dead Dash in Honolulu

(“Honey! Can I spend a couple thousand bucks on an airplane ticket tomorrow? You’re working all day anyway, right?”).

And of course there’s Zombies, Run! An app for your smart phone, which I helped Kickstart back in the day. It’s pretty fun—as you run, it keeps track of your progress, and you’re audibly chased by zombies as you go, picking up survival gear for the in-app game when you aren’t running. It even meshes with whatever music you’re playing so you don’t have to go out there alone.

I see people talk about shot guns and fire axes and crossbows all the time, show pictures of their dream zombie fortresses, discuss food rationing and survival techniques… but not enough is said about good old fashioned running. It’s the most basic, and I would say, most essential, of all the tools necessary to survive the undead apocalypse.

Cars run out of gas, guns run out of ammo, hatchets lose their edge, buildings fall down. But as long as you can trust your legs and lungs, you’re going to be doing pretty good.

Free Zombies (But Not: Free the Zombies)

If you’re reading this, you’re not playing No More Room in Hell. Well, guess what, neither am I. But man I want to. I was on my computer last night and I saw an ad pop up. Was it Reddit? Or maybe Steam itself? Yeah, it’s on Steam. I downloaded it but had to go to bed before it finished. Cause I have this job I go to everyday and I have to be up early. #$%^& morality.

Go download the game now. I am telling you this even though I haven’t played it yet. It’s free, damn it, it’s zombies, what more do you need?

Why are you still reading this? You’re like the shuffling dead, chasing me to the last line of this blog post. You can’t be reasoned with. All you want to do is feed. Well, here’s me screaming and writing away. Thank goodness for spell check. I need a weapon of some kind. I could bash in the brain of your sensibilities by saying something awful to get you to stop reading. George Romero was an idiot! That’s a shotgun blast to your guts!

Ah but it’s not true and you’re still coming after me. No More Room in Hell is, from what I can tell on their website, a first-person survival mod of the Source engine (that’s the Half-Life one. Hey, is that cool or what: Zombies are dead, but walking around like they’re alive, so they sorta have life, or Half Life. Yes it’s a stretch. When you’re being chased by reader-zombies you use anything you can to keep going). It’s not unlike Left 4 Dead in it’s co-op aspect, but up to 8 can play, which reminds me a bit of Killing Floor. But in NMRiH (name taken from that line in Dawn of the Dead: “When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”) you’re defending your base, which is different enough from those others to be intriguing.

Maybe you haven’t stopped reading this and gone straight to Steam because you don’t have Steam. What is wrong with you people? How can you be the sort of person who reads zombie blogs but doesn’t play zombies games? Yes, you can get Dead Island on your X Box, but come on, man. No wonder you’re still after me.

Oh no! The inevitable tree branch/trash can/random object as tripped me up! You’re closing in! My workmates are arriving and I have to finish this blog post! You got me! Oh the horror as you feed on these last final words. But before I go: go downloadNo More Room in Hell now and tell me what it’s like!

Zombie Blogs

Hint-- he has this image on his website.

Since I am writing a zombie blog I often Google the words “zombie blog” to see what the other Zombie blogs are doing.

The top hit hasn't updated since October 30th. I mean, what the damn hell? No HALLOWEEN update? I think the person who writes it is in Canada. Do they have Halloween in Canada?

Not only that, but previous updates include one at the beginning of October, and the one before that is in July. A two-month span of no updates. And this is the first hit you get on Google when you search for “zombie blog.”

My complaint is not against the blogger himself. Actually, it’s a pretty good blog, and I’ve been enjoying my shuffling wander through the blood-soaked organs of its archives. Nor do I think mine is “better.” I’m not out to stare and compare.

Its just that I want fresh zombie stuff, so I can mingle with the freshness. Its all about SEO, right? Search Engines are zombies and I am trying to get their attention by shouting and looking like food.

Which is why I haven’t mentioned that other blog by name-- if I link to it, I increase its ranking on Google. That might make me a jerk, but, I have told you how to find it easily, and, I’m thinking about sending him a copy of “Still LIfe, With Zombie” for him to review, which means I’m hoping he’ll link to my site.

If he does another update this year.

And when he does, I will, of course, put a link back to him. I’m not a monster.

Everything's All You Can Eat for Zombies

A horde of them at the doors to the department store, moaning, gnashing their teeth, pounding with enraged fists. More of them, attracted by the noise, shuffle up and join the throng. The glass starts to crack, metal door frames bending, until finally, with the a crash, they’re through. The Christmas shopping melee has begun. Hungry shoppers, looking for the best deals.
There’s this idea that the zombie is a good symbol for consumerism, but I just don’t buy it (pun intended). I don’t agree with this idea of a mindless, monstrous crowd eating up everything before them with no more motivation than the simple need to feed on pretty plastic products, like the ones they read about in the magazines and online.

It seems to me to be too elitist an attitude. Zombieness is the constant mindless eating, but it’s also the infectious nature of a zombie bite, and the irreversible state of being a zombie. In order for me to believe these vicious consumers are zombie-like, I have to believe that it’s catching, that that catching it against the will of the new consumer means he’ll never not be able to spend all of is money as fast as possible.

Zombie stories are about survival, essentially, and for me to cotton to this idea of zombie-like consumerism, I have to agree that there are consumerism survivors, fighting each other over the last few precious resources. What are those supposed to be: art, culture, education? What are the elites spending their money on if not iPads and Tickle Me Elmos? Am I to understand that so long as consumers are going to Best Buy, they’re not creating the culture the elites want to wallow in, and this is why those resources are scarce? That sounds like slavery.

Calling some aspect of society zombie-like is to do nothing more than to dehumanize them. To other them, to establish an sense of self predicated on the idea that there are those who are different. It’s a bad use of Derrida, if you ask me. Unless we’re talking about Keeping Up With the Joneses, or Conspicuous Consumption, we’re not talking about people who identify with buying, or with what they buy.

Zombie is not an identity, it’s a label, and its abuse by those who turn up their nose at wanting the latest Nikes gives zombiedom a bad name. So stop it. If you want to feel superior to people who’d rather go to Starbucks than Cat Fiend’s Koffee Shoppe, just call yourself a hipster and be done with it.

Lots of Zombies to Play With

Desperate to write a post in Zombie for Life today, but having had a tough weekend of zombie-free thought, I Googled, simply, “Zombie.”

A little window popped up and told me that a Zombie is an animated corpse raised by magical means. Now, I’ve talked about the difficulty in classifying the different kinds of zombies across the meta-verses of lore, but I, myself, don’t much like the “magic” type zombies.

But I clicked the link and it went to Wikipedia, and more importantly, it took me to the page about Haitian voodoo zombies. So “magic” here does not mean “in a world where magic is real, such as described in a fantasy novel.” Here, “magic” means “a word we use to describe what people think makes their religion work.”

I’m no fan of religion, but that seems a bit condescending.

But nevermind that. Wikipedia is great about letting you know that there are alternatives to what you thought you were searching for. It told me that could instead read about zombies from films at Zombie (fictional) or I could see Philosophical zombie or I could go to the disambiguation page.

The disambiguation page, as expected, mentioned the use of the word zombie in the titles of things, like movies and games and songs and drinks. Lots of those. But I was, of course, most intrigued by Philosophical zombie.

P-zombies are people who don’t consciousness or sentience, but are indistinguishable from normal people Apparently these hypothetical people are used to argue against philosophies that boil human existence down to non-conscious parts.

It has something to do with Descartes arm wrestling Kierkegaard in Plato’s Cave. And Star Trek teleporters. Fascinating stuff, really, but hardly a metaphor—the word zombie is a convenience for these philosophers, and brings with it none of the delicious connotations of:

Blood and guts and brains and shotguns and hunger and terror and all that fun.

Ah well. Back to the disambiguation page. I wonder why the Cranberries called their song that?

The Day After Zombie Day is Zombie Day

Halloween’s done. For the most part. There’s cheap candy in the grocery stores, leftover costumes in bargain bins, lazy people’s decorations moldering in their windows. It used to be that November 1st was the first day that you’d start to see Christmas advertising, a sure fire-way to erase Halloween form your head. (Of course nowadays Xmas starts worming it’s way into ads as early as August. Talk about eating your brain, sheesh.)

But die-hards stick with their zombie love year round. This is the way it should be. Zombies, in the movies and books and videogames, are unrelenting. So to should zombie fandom. We don’t call this blog Zombie for Life for nothing.

Going on today, right now, is the Zombethics symposium at Emory University. They’re discussing apocalypse survival, pop zombie culture, “the ethics if defining brain death,” and other topics, all in the context of zombies.

I found about this only just now myself, from a blog post at Psychology Today, where Dr. Steven Scholzman talks about ethics, and explores what is essential the question of euthanasia (although he never uses that word) via an examination of zombies. It’s the same question that pops up in all the zombie flicks: are zombies still people, can they become people again?

Of course, the zombie movies only ask this questionto set up the more important question of: are the bad guys still people, can we kill them? The zombie apocalypse is just a gore-coated way to examine existentialism, really: you’ve been isolated by these zombies, and so your only choice is murder or suicide.

The irony is that, if you choose murder, that is suicide, because you’ve justified some other guy killing you. And this is why every day is zombie day, because existential angst never ever goes away.

Candy helps, though.

So Many Undead It Will Drive You Batty

Halloween is Dr. Dratoc’s least favorite time of year. He’s as enthusiastic about costumes and parties as he is about draining abscesses, which he did most of the day. A guy in is twenties, who’d been bitten by a dog, had foregone medical treatment, and gotten a nice bag of neutrophils for his trouble.

Still, Dr. Dratoc tries to make an effort, and agrees to attend a friend’s party. He decides to go dressed up as doctor. Who will know? He considers helping out in the ER for a day, to get his lab coat nice and splattered. He dismisses the idea immediately, of course—Typhoid Mary was bad enough; he’d hate to be remembered as Staph-Infection Steve.

The party is thumping, packed with Miley Cyruses and government-shutdown-pun costumes. Dratoc is standing next to the punch bowl, marveling at a party in the modern era that even bothers with a punch bowl, nevermind the vectors for bacteria transmission it presents. Still, it’s full of alcohol, so there’s that. He’s talking to Greg Seibar, the party’s host's roommate, who’s dressed, of course, like a zombie.

“So, dude. Get this. Later? Doug? You remember Doug? Crazy Doug? He’s coming as a vampire. With bats, dude. With bats.”

“I see,” says Dr. Dratoc, trying to ignore Seibar’s attempt at lividity. Is that guacamole spread on his face?

“Real live bats dude. Seriously, it’s going to be—“

There’s a scream, and the crowd parts as a man stumbles into the room, falling over and crashing through coffee table. He’s dressed in dark red, a tattered cape on his back. He manages to stand up, and there’s more screams. The makeup on his face is incredibly realistic. Red welts all over, foam running from his mouth. His eyes are wild and rolling as he staggers towards a girl dressed like an undead postal worker, grinding his teeth.

“Dude!” Greg, sloshing a cupful of punch and taking it to the new arrival. “Freaking awesome dude! Have a—“

At the sight of the cup the man goes into a rage, bellowing at an ungodly volume, knocking the cup to one side, and lunging for Greg’s throat. Dr Dratoc leaps forward and pulls the man back before he can sink his teeth into Greg’s flesh.

~~~

Rabies, or hydrophobia, or lyssavirus, has been around for most of recorded history, and probably predates civilization. Since it’s naming, some 4000 years ago, the disease has always been associated with animals, which is why, when symptoms show in someone without the presentation of zootic contexts, diagnoses can be varied. This makes “zombie!” an easy way to describe someone afflicted with late-stage rabies.

Symptoms can be similar to what is seen in your “fast and angry” type zombie movies, such as World War Z and 28 Days Later. In fact, fans of these popular zombie vehicles will recall that at the start of the outbreaks in these films, rabies is believed to be the cause of the violence that humanity witnesses.

Rabies can be transmitted via the saliva, which is why biting is often the means by which new victims become infected. Modern treatments now include some protocols that have shown limited success even in post-symptomatic patients.

~~~

While Dr. Dratoc struggles with the enraged man, Greg scoots himself backwards and hides behind a table. “What the damn hell! He thinks he’s a zombie! He thinks—“

Moving quickly, Dratoc pulls his wallet out and shoves it into the man’s mouth. The man clamps down on it hard enough to make his jaw bulge.

Everyone’s staring. A girl dressed like slutty Gloria Steinem says, “Is he having a stroke?”

“No, he has rabies. The wallet’s for him to bite on instead of me." The man struggles, but Dratoc holds on. "Someone call 911. And get them to send animal control to this idiot’s house. He’s probably got a pile of dead bats in his basement.”

Half a dozen people pull out cell phones and start poking. One takes a picture. “Is he going to be alright?” the girl says.

Dr. Dratoc tightens his grip, even as the man begins to relax, easing from mania into lethargy. “Probably not. I say he’s got an eight percent chance. But stupider things have happened.”

They're Coming to Get You, Doctor Barbara

I have a source who works for the VA Hospital. I am not making this up. This is a notice that was sent to everyone in the building:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO ALL EMPLOYEES

Human to Human transmission of Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome has been confirmed in the US. The disease is expected to spread exponentially this week, estimates from CDC are that the disease will reach epic proportions bordering on Pandemic and is anticipated to culminate later this week after which it will go into a relatively dormant state. Transmission is from direct contact and the mortality rate of those infected is expected to be 100%. Infected individuals can be identified by pallor, yellowish-gray skin, blood coming from the eyes, nose, and mouth, and an insatiable appetite for human flesh. Infected individuals are often referred to as the “Walking Dead.”

Yes, we are talking about a full-blown ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE. You have time to prepare before this becomes a PANDEMIC so please visit [url redacted].

When this source sent me the above, chills raced up and down my spine. Not because of the coming doom. Not because life as we know it was about to change forever. No, it was that phrase:

Ataxic Neurodegenerative Satiety Deficiency Syndrome

What a #$%^&* awesome name for what zombie’s got. The writer/thief in me is totally stealing that.

By the way, the email went on:
You may be laughing right now but the fact is that if you are prepared for a Zombie Apocalypse you will be prepared for Earthquakes, Winter-Storms, and all other disasters.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! J

Yeah, right. Who is this so-called “J,” just some dude trying to get people ready for “winter-storms?”

Please. This is a government institution we’re talking about. We’re doomed. I can’t wait!

Zombie Me Up, Scotty

There’s a Walking Dead convention going on this weekend in Atlanta. Walker Stalker Con. I only found out about it this morning, and only from the Seattle Times sports page (a joke about The Falcons and how they’re playing lately). And while I have said that I’m not the biggest fan of the show itself, I do love zombie stuff, and I would love to attend if I could.

I’ve only ever been to one convention, and that was a horror/sci-fi convention in Baltimore. I went because there was supposed to be a band playing there, Darling Violetta, but then they didn’t show up. But I did see Rasputina for the first time, met the folks from Torsion, and shook hands with both Anthony Stewert Head and Ted Raimi.

But it was a lousy convention, otherwise. I’ve been dying to go to PAX here in Seattle, but it’s always sold out by the time I hear about it (are you getting the impression that I am woefully misinformed, much of the time? Yeah, I am). I want that convention immersion. I want that full-on Trekkie experience.

I want to see the cosplayers and sit down to some beta-testing game and get my picture taken with a B-list celebrity, then Instagram it, put it on Tumblr, and watch the likes, notes, and reblogs stack up. ‘Cause that’s how this all works. I want to be one of the horde.

I’m serious. We zombie lovers love to think about our apocalypse survival plans, love to pick up virtual shotguns and video-game-blast away at rotting heads, and compare notes on who did it better, Romero or O’Bannon (okay, maybe that last one’s a no-brianer, pun intended).

But we like to BE the zombie, too. Zombie walks and Halloween costumes and T-Shirts, oh my. And for me, going to one of these conventions would be like ripping into the fear-choked flesh of a chased-down victim.

I wonder how much a plane ticket would cost me?

Zombies are Everywhere

A 50s looking greaser type is thrashing away, making violent love to his guitar for everyone to see. The music pounds and twangs and croons all at the same time. A guy dressed in skull make-up and a mohawk is riding a stand-up bass, and the drummer is thrashing his crash symbol and snare and squirting steady bursts of sweat. The crowd is hicks, hillbillies, trailer park graduates in their late 40s, kids from the right side of the tracks in ripped flannel shirts and greasy jeans.

The singer strikes a final chord, then steps up to the mike, throttling it with one hand while the other scratches his deep sideburns. His duck’s ass coif hangs limp in his face. “Thankyu thankyu, thankyuverumush. Y’all feel that?”

The crowd roars approval.

“Awright,” he steps back, plucks a B major chord from low to high, and the crowd roars louder. “When I look into your eyes out there, when I look out into your faces, you know what I see? I see a little bit of Elvis in each and every one out there, let me tell ya! Wellllllll…” he starts in with a fast riff, and out of nowhere, the zombie attacks.

~~~

In the introduction to my zombie story collection, I point out that “zombies are a thing.” They’ve become so much a part of our culture as to invade advertising, newspaper comics, and Sunday-afternoon family restaurants.

Of course, we’re in the middle of Halloween season as I write this, so zombies are going to be trotted out like Santa at Christmas. But that sort of proves the point. Zombies are ubiquitous, more so than Santa; any summertime evoking of Santa is a reference to Christmas, while zombies in July do not necessarily reference Halloween.

I suppose that’s because Christmas is strictly seasonal, while horror is year-round. But Zombies are evoked in so many non-horror ways. (I’m not talking about the GiffGaff ad, or this Ford ad, because while these are amusing, the irony is based in an understanding of scariness). I’m talking about ads like this one for Sprint, or Hillary Price’s “Rhymes with Orange cartoon today, or how about all of these Baby Blues strips?

Then there’s Zombie Burger and Drink Lab, in Des Moines, Iowa. They serve “goreMet Bashed Burgers,” “Soylent Greens,” “New Jersey Rippers” (hot dogs) soups, sides, and “Brain Freeze shakes.” For you uber-aficionados, who love the blood and gore and post-apocalyptic chaos of deep zombie mayhem, what resonates more for you than dining in the midst of a shambling horde?

Zombies: they’re here, no fear. Get used to it.

~~~

The zombie pushes the singer off the stage, who, already eight beers into his set, falls down and stays down. The drummer and bass player, oblivious, go right on playing. The zombie picks up the fallen guitar, steps closer to the amp, grabs some feedback, and stomps the fuzz pedal as the inexpertly fingers a Z chord. “Zombies are everywhere” it gurgles into the microphone. “Zombies are everything. Zombie are everybody, Zombies are still the king…”

The crowd goes absolutely wild.

What I Didn’t Like about World War Z

The zombies didn’t eat anybody.

They’re the polar opposite of zombies in The Walking Dead. The WWZ zombies run fast, bite their prey—once—and then move on. You don’t become a zombie when you die; you become one immediately. In as much as they a) bite people and b) can’t be reasoned with and c) look freaky, I guess they’re zombies. But that movie could have been made using different make-up and a different word, and it wouldn’t be a “zombie” movie any longer.

I respect that there needs to be different kinds of zombies in the zombie meta-verse. I applaud those who made the movie for trying something different. But at the point where I realized the zombies don’t eat people, I stopped being horrified. It was just scary. Like war is scary—so I guess it was a good title after all.

Now, for my money, the zombies in The Walking Dead are quintessential zombies. Slow, inexorable, and almost always dripping gore. Dress ‘em up in clown suits, call ‘em ballerinas, and they’re still zombies. Its that “inexorable” that I like. They’re dependable. They will always be there to mess things up.

Because I sort of find The Walking Dead boring. I know, zombie stories are about the people, not the shamblers (with exceptions like Monster Island and my own stories). But TWD has become a real soap opera. I get bored watching The Governor and Rick gaze at each other with tired eyes. Luckily, those inexorable zombies eventually come along and do what they do to the best laid plans of men.

I’d love to see a mashup of the two. Give me gore-chomping zombies versus humans who are solving a mystery Give me something. TWD is just One Life to Live with guts and guns. WWZ is just The Big Red One with nibblers for Nazis. I want The Usual Zombie Suspects. Or even Zombiedeus.

I’m a picky eater; I’d make a lousy zombie.

You, Zombie

Darkness falls, and the city is lit by warm yellow light. Your pineal gland, no longer suppressed by blue rays from the wide-spectrum light of the sun, begins to produce melatonin. You walk down the street towards your apartment building, become slightly, almost imperceptibly drowsy.

Out of the shadows a figure emerges. A homeless person, dressed in filthy rags, looking for a hand out. You try to ignore him as he shuffles closer. Suddenly he’s upon you, grabbing your arm. He shoves his face in, teeth bared, and bites. But your heart is racing in fear, your adrenal glands pumping, producing a burst of energy and pain-suppression, along with an (unhealthy) dose of cortisol. Still, you can see blood, the homeless guy’s bitten clean through the sleeve if your jacket. You manage to push him off and run down the street.

At the corner you stop to catch your breath, pain finally starting to ooze into your arm. You look back—he actually doesn’t look very homeless. He’s wearing suit, albeit a stained and torn one. He’s still shuffling toward you, and that’s your blood dripping from his mouth. You turn the corner and run home.

Inside you strip off your jacket to look at the wound. It’s not a very big bite, but in the poor lighting of your bathroom the edges look a little green. You pour hydrogen peroxide over it, wash it as best as you can, wrap it in gauze. Jesus Christ, what the hell was that all about.

You grab some leftovers from the refrigerator, sit down in front of the TV. Inside your brain, a virus attacks and annihilates your pineal gland. All serotonin productions shuts down. You are wide awake. You watch one, two, three hours of TV. Soon it’s midnight. Then three in the morning. Then six. You haven’t slept a wink. And something happened to you last night, what was it? There’s red and green-stained gauze on your arm. Did that have something to do with it?

Your hippocampus is no longer in communications with your visual cortex. You see things, but they don’t have any meaning. Your adrenal glands are producing a steady supply of adrenaline and cortisol, further eroding your hippocampus and your amygdala. Your metabolism has been ramped up, and you’re running a fever. Free radicals built up inside your brain are taking out neurons in your speech and fine motor areas.

There’s a stirring in your belly. You’re hungry. You know you need to eat. You know you need protein, meat, as fresh and free of decay as possible. You stumble out your door. Your olfactory senses are no longer distracted by emotion or memory. You can smell food in the door across the hall. You move towards the door, but it’s closed. You pound on it, and hear movement inside. This makes you hungrier. Food inside. Pound on the door.

The door opens and you lurch forward. Food. Hair and eyes and skin and food. She screams. You grab her arm, and she kicks you away, runs down a hall, slams a door. You follow the food. Your throat is convulsing, swallowing in anticipation. Your gums are bleeding as they recede and rot, your teeth protruding. You move towards the door. It opens, and she’s standing there. There a bright flash and a loud noise, and you’re pushed back. Five more noisy flashes, all on top of one another, and you fall down.

Hydrostatic shock has stopped your heart. There’s a hole in your shoulder, your leg, your stomach. Your brain, starved for oxygen, starts to shut down. But the cancer eating your brain is feeding your adrenal glands. Free radicals mutate and collide, exciting nerve endings, telling your arms to move, your legs to move. You stand up. You are dead, no heart beat, adrenaline and cortisol washing through your body like blood soaking through a sponge. You’re rapidly deteriorating but the food still standing in front of you and moaning, “no, no, no!” has protein, her own store of adrenaline, and maybe a few drops of that sweet sweet melatonin.

Your lurch towards her. She falls back, blocks the door. You’re on top of her, sinking your teeth into her neck. She screams, but your grip is too powerful, pinning her as your rip out her throat. The eating is everything. Healthy meat, clean meat, peristalsis uninterrupted by breathing.

But it’s not enough. Finally you stand, your guts, unnoticed, spilling out of the gaping wound in your belly. There’s more food in this building. You can hear it. You can smell it.



You can feel it. It’s the only thing you can feel.

Dr. Manny, You are Paranoid and Misinformed (about Zombies)

In a recent post at Fox News, Dr. Manny opined that “America's obsession with 'The Walking Dead' is hurting our society.” He went on to say: “call me paranoid and misinformed, but there is one common theme that is pervasive in American pop culture today: violence. Even more specifically, zombie violence.”

You’re paranoid, Manny. I googled “zombie” and got about 231 million hits. I googled “war” and got 1.6 billion. And last time I checked, your own Fox News, where you opine regularly, covers war about 99% more often than it does zombies. So if its violence you’re afraid of, tell your handlers to back off.

You’re misinformed, too. You say, “We also see this zombie obsession in many videogames. Even more disturbingly, these games create environments for young children—“ and I’m going to stop you right there. These games do NOT create environments for young children. The average video game player is 34. Most video games are not created for children, and if you are giving YOUR children these games, you’re a sicko.

You Fox News types haul out this “violent video games warp kids” trope every chance you get. But that’s like saying “alcohol makes kids alcoholic.” No one’s legally giving kids alcohol, and zombie video games are not for kids. You even say “That’s why they’re labeled M for Mature.” Do you not know what that means?

But back to zombies. ”This obsession with the undead in television and other media is quite puzzling.” But why is it puzzling to you? You point out that the concept has been around for decades, you mention “zombie runs…” and that’s it. TV shows, video games, and zombie runs, oh my. How is this an obsession, exactly? Where’s the zombie flags flying over zombie protestors angry at our zombie government for giving the zombie poor acces to low-cost zombie healthcare?

Because that, Dr. Manny, would be an obsession. The same way you trot out the words “socialized medicine” every chance you get to castigate the Affordable Care Act. (Little fact for you, Doctor M: America already has socialized medicine. It’s called Medicaire and Medicaid. And you’ve already made a mint off of it. So pipe down).

I know why you don’t like zombies, Dr. Manny. Zombies are by the people, of the people, for the people. Zombie ‘fantasies” show us how the so called power-elite would be powerless against a mindless horde. And since you conservative types view us regular folks as “mindless hordes” already, it scares you silly.

But don’t worry, when it comes to eating brains, we’ll skip your empty head.

On the Difficulties of Creating a Zombie Taxonomy

Any approach to classifying different types or kinds of zombies is already working in the realm of meta-fiction. This is to say that comparing two different kinds of zombies requires comparing two different ideas created by two different people. Therefore, internal consistencies will the greatest challenge to establishing a robust taxonomy. Perhaps one way to mitigate this challenge is to base a zombie taxonomy not on the zombie creator but on the zombie consumer. What does the consumer know a zombie to be, and how does a consumer choose one kind of zombie as more “authentic” than another?

For example, consider the first popularization of zombies, in George Romero’s classic Night of the Living Dead. The original consumer would have come to the film without any context besides other horror films, and may have considered these zombies “vampiric.” And now consider the recent update of The Omega Man, called I Am Legend. In this movie, the vampires have all the appearance of zombies, and this is how many people refer to them.

This is because, due to the ongoing popularization of zombies, the modern consumer comes to a film or other zombie entertainment vehicle already equipped with a full collection of zombie tropes. The zombie consumer classifies the zombies by what she already knows, adjusting only as much as is required by the films’ adherence to revelation and consistency.

Zombies in Romero’s film eat only brains. In The Walking Dead, they eat human flesh. In World War Z, zombies bite, but they do not consume flesh or brains. Are these aspects of the zombie integral to the overall horror felt by the consumer? If so, she may classify zombies by what they eat.

In World War Z, 28 Days Later, and the video game Left 4 Dead, zombies run at top speed. In The Walking Dead and Shaun of the Dead, the zombies are slow shufflers. Whether or not zombies “should” be able to run quickly is a hot topic for debate among fans of zombie consumption, so the zombie consumer will certainly classify zombies by their ambulatory agility.

And how are zombies made? By chemicals in Return of the Living Dead. A bite resulting in death will make a zombie in Night of the Living Dead. Just a single bite will do the trick in World War Z. And while we don’t know why, in The Walking Dead, anyone who dies comes back as a zombie, no matter what the cause of death.

These three axes alone make zombie classification difficult enough. But other creative choices by zombie makers further complicate the issue. Some zombie vehicles include sentimental or even sentient zombies (Shaun of the Dead, Fido, Warm Bodies). Do zombies eventually rot away to nothing, or can they “grow” (as in David Wellington’s novel Monster Island)? And just what do we do with super-heroes turned undead in Marvel Zombies?

I began this essay as an introduction to creating my own zombie taxonomy, but I’m afraid my brains have been consumed by all of these different zombie types. Like a horde descending upon me, I’m succumbing to the realization that no single taxonomy will ever do justice to understanding zombies.

It's All Fun and Games until your Flesh Starts Rotting Away

Things are bustling at Lidokork General, a hospital right in the heart of the city. The ER is hopping (rash of food poisoning from a raw-foods bistro), the pharmacy is backed up (one too many pharmacist at home sick with strep) and the jocks in Ortho are horsing around, as usual. One of them, Dr. Crank, is giving Dr. Dratoc a hard time.

“So, Dratoc, heard you cured a zombie last week.”

Dratoc sighs. He doesn’t have time for this. He’s got a patient in 14B who isn’t responding to antibiotics, and her necrotizing fasciitis may require debridement, and he is not looking forward to his consult with the resident otolaryngologist. Talk about the walking dead. The guy’s breath could knock a buzzard off an offal wagon.

“Did you say zombie?” A police officer, walking by the nurse’s station, stops for a second.

The ortho surgeons burst out laughing. Dr. Crank claps Dr. Dratoc on the back. “Here’s your man, sergeant!”

The cop glares at Dr. Crank, who doesn’t seem to notice, then turns to Dr. Dratoc. “I just brought a guy in, caught him trying to break into a pill-lab on the east side. The doc in ER doesn’t know what to make of him. Teeth all busted, eyes bloodshot, running sores on his arms and legs. I swear he looks like an honest to god zombie.”

Dr. Dratoc takes a deep breath, sighs again. “Show me.”

###

It’s called Krokodil, a mixture of codeine, paint thinner, gasoline, and whatever else the pushers who make it can find in their garages. The high has been described as comparable to heroin, although it can be more intense, and much briefer. As an opiate-based drug, it’s terribly addictive, and abusers wind up taking more not just because it’s so cheap, but because they want to avoid the excruciating withdrawl.

But the worst part is the toxic effect it has on the body. People who shoot up krokodil develop green spots at the sight of injection almost immediately, and subsequently gangrene. Their flesh starts to literally rot away in places, which means they have to choose a different spot on their body for the next injection. More exposure to the corrosive chemicals: more gangrene. Abusers don’t last more than a few years.

If they’re lucky. The drug doesn’t just effect the skin, but any major organ, every major organ. Including an especially the brain. Imagine someone shuffling towards you with rotting skin, groaning through a decaying larynx, eyes vacant from brain damage. Sound familiar?

###

Dr. Dratoc follows the police officer into one of the ER examination rooms, where a young man sits, handcuffed to the bed. It’s just as the cop described: open wounds on the kid’s arms and legs, skin turning green, blackened in places. Dratoc does a cursory examination, and finds track marks in the few places where the skin is still more or less clean.

The doctor shakes his head. “Krokodil. Not very common in the US. In fact, I think there have been less than ten reported cases this year.” So far, he doesn’t say out loud.

The police officer makes a face. “I figured he was on meth. What’s Krokodil?”

“Let me put it this way,” Dr. Dratoc says, grabbing forms to admit the junkie into intensive care. “If you had to choose between Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, which TV show would you rather live in?”

The cop makes another face. The junkie gurgles

Dr. Dratoc nods. “Yeah. This is like both.”