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.

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!

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?

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.

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.