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.”