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!