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.

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.