Saturday, October 3, 2009

University of Florida Does Not Want You To Be Safe


Serious-minded webmasters at the University of Florida have removed a disaster recovery relief scenario from school websites. Apparently, like most managers, they can only predict what has already happened. In related news, Florida is full of mottled-skinned monsters, moaning about blue plate specials.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hONt0eybRkSjBswGTey2Tp8SX6EwD9B31M102

Sunday, August 2, 2009

The Vampire Thrill Is Gone, Which Is Zombastic

Romantic yearnings for submission to immortal, evil aristocrats done not make those myths supreme. This writer seems to think that zombies, because they aren't as dashing as vampires, are a lesser myth. Zombies are the right myth for our time because they elucidate the banality of our destruction and our experience of the objective world. The world doesn't care if you're a romantic, it's still going to eat your brain. However, I do love the term, 'zombastic.'
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1914182,00.html

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Jane Austin's Characters Were Already Zombies


This post is in reaction to a review of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. This writer describes Jane Austin's work as 'timeless' and 'serious' and, by contrast to the attitude of zombie enthusiasts, implies that it is sacred. In my opinion the only thing timeless about Jane Austin is the experience of reading her - the books never seem to end, nothing changes, nothing important happens. Zombies disrupt the limbo of the drawing room and take lovers of serious literature straight to hell. The rest of us enjoy a better story (for my money, the best way to improve on comedies of manners is not to read them. When I hear the name 'Merchant and Ivory,' I want to shoot an elephant.) Instead of bemoaning the introduction of the undead into the timeless, someone might want to ask why this was done and why zombies are so popular now.

Zombie stories, according to the writer of the review, are a 'fad.' I agree that zombies are quite fashionable these days, but there is more than caprice behind the rise of the zombie. Aren't Darcy and Bennett already zombies, milling about drawing rooms, moaning about manners? It's their worldview that's being killed in the rewrite to Pride and Prejudice.

Manners mean little when monsters are at the door, which they seem to be with increasing frequency these days. Anecdotally, more people have spoken to me about the satire of Austin, which came out in 2009, than about Austin's work, which was sealed, safe in it's drawing room, long before my birth. The world for which Austin's social criticisms were apt has long been in the crypt. Austin fans should be happy for it's reanimation. Before the rise of the zombies, critics were already calling for someone to let a little air into Austin's stuffy rooms. Now a fiend has burst through the wall.

http://www.patrolmag.com/arts/1746/pride-and-prejudice-and-zombies

Friday, July 17, 2009

Savage Chickens


Doug Savage draws cartoons on Post-Its, about a chicken who's a zombie neurologist!
http://www.savagechickens.com/

Friday, July 10, 2009

Zombie Attacks Tokyo


This is an educational video about hard work and team work made by fooling children into thinking a zombie is attacking their apartment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASr5GcuDHug

Zombies Exist!


This YouTube video highlights research in which a parasitic worm uses genetic manipulation to zombify and control its host. Neurologically, zombies exist. A zombie is one in a mental or neurological state who is not in control of his or her mental/neurological functions as he or she should be. Zombification can make you, proven by the infected cricket in the video, kill yourself.

You Are Your Brain's Zombie

If you hold your breath until you pass out, you are in control. Once you pass out, your brain takes over and breathing resumes. That 'you' you cannot control; your nonconscious/nonvolitionary brain is more primary than conscious you.

My Zombie, Myself

How can you tell if you're a zombie? Ultimately, you can't. William James wrote that the question of free will vs. determinism didn't make sense because we have to act as if our wills are free. So it is with zombiedom.

A little zombiedom shouldn't matter because you always find yourself in the middle of life, which no one has total control over. You don't think yourself up from nothing. The idea of being a zombie is only rigor-mortifying to those who are slaves to their moral/ethical 'certainties.'

What you can do to be less of a zombie is to have an active mind and question things. The cricket in the video can't ask itself if jumping in the pool is a suicidally stupid thing to do, but your mother may have asked you if Mr. Bad Influence jumped off a bridge, would you do it too. She was asking you to think, not to blindly obey or be influenced. If something has control of your brain, you have no choice. This is true of your own brain controlling your conscious mind, but it isn't true of all your beliefs/thoughts/decisions/actions.

It is, in part, up to you. Are you going to have an active mind or are you going to be a docile body?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5220551385066049121&ei=UnVXSoDsHsW8lQeB1sCnDg&q=zombie&hl=en

Zombie Peeps


I want to give a shout out to all my zombie marshmallow peeps. They're so cute, even if undead. I hear the confections consortium is rebranding from Just Born to Unholy Child of Satan. By the by, the article is worth reading.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=109565

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Unfunny writer calls Jackson mourners zombies

You can slog through this bloviation, or just read my last post. http://www.patrolmag.com/arts/1725/michael-jackson

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Jackson Funeral Epicenter of Zombie Apocalypse



Charlie Reis

Los Angeles, July 7, 2009 – When Forest Lawn Memorial Park Drive opened just after 10 this morning, fans mobbed the hearse carrying the corpse of King of Pop, Michael Jackson, causing the rear door to unlatch and the coffin to slide out.

Mari Gustafson, one of the first Michael Jackson fans to stand in front of the gates to the cemetery, described the unearthly scene. “Fans started rocking the hearse. The coffin came out. Then the lid popped up, followed by Michael’s body. People went for it like sharks, like Islamists after the blood of martyrs.”

And so began the Zombie Apocalypse. Unsatisfied to merely shred the shroud of the King of Never-Never Land, fans began to consume Jackson’s corpse. “It was like some sort of unholy communion,” Gustafson said. “They were eating his pale flesh and speaking in tongues.”

Reports that followed, although confused, relate a mass hysteria centered on synchronized movements and flesh eating.

“It began with Jackson, then the infected turned on the crowd.”

“I was here for Michael,” said Jose Palomino, a fan from Valencia, Spain. “Not the celebrities.” He began crying as he recounted how he had put off buying tickets to Jackson’s concerts, thinking they were simply too pricey.

“I’m at a place now where I wasn’t at just a few minutes ago,” he said. “I’m not here to say goodbye. I don’t even want to say goodbye.” At which point he bit a chunk of flesh of the deceased’s forearm. His head began to make rhythmic movements as his limbs began to stiffen.

He then began to move on members of the mob further from Jackson’s body, biting and clawing his way through.

“It began with [those who ate] Jackson,” Gustafson said, “then the infected turned on the crowd.” She wanted to get away from the throng, and purposely made her way to the cemetery rather than the public memorial at Staples, only to encounter a stiffly moving, yet expertly choreographed zombie apocalypse.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Vampires Are Yesterday’s News, Zombies Are The Hotties Of Tomorrow

This writer is correct in saying that zombies are the new vampires, but incorrect in deeming zombies sexy. Vampires are intimate monsters, while zombies are, by definition, impersonal. We are telling zombie stories more now because of the alien nature of what used to be the familiar world. It is a description of our world that we use with increasing frequency because it is increasingly accurate.
http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-vampires-are-yesterdays-news-zombies-are-the-hotties-of-tomorrow/

Saturday, July 4, 2009

In a recent story out of New (and improved) Zealand, a prisoner relates how his mental state ranged from panic to zombie-like. Being a zombie is a mental, or neurological, condition. Zombies are real. Zombies are us. The more we are asked/compelled to act/obey without thinking, the more zombielike we are.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/2565861/David-Bain-tells-of-prison-violence

Friday, June 26, 2009

Hug-A-Zombie Day

This writer is exactly right, Hug-A-Zombie Day makes no sense... to the uninfected.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Wait and see


Hey all,
Which means no one. I just sent an email to Sony asking to see Zombieland early. If they write back, I'll see if I can host a screening in Brooklyn for all my fellow zombie fans.
Charlie

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

fun little zombie quiz

title says it: http://www.interbent.com/quizzes//zombie-quiz.php

Monday, June 22, 2009

Hickory Plays Host to Zombie Movie

My favorite thing, besides the shirts in the photo, is that Hickory has a newsletter. I try to keep up with all the bbq sauces. One local, Scott Polster came to the casting call with his 8-year-old son, Chase. Polster, a doctor, said he loves horror movies, and that he's always wanted to be a director, even though he applied to be an extra. I wonder about the readings, "Try it again with more undeadness." Chase wanted to know if any little zombies were needed. The extras are only needed for two days of filming. Chase, buddy, get your dad to direct your own zombie movie, then you can be a zombie to your little heart's content. http://www2.hickoryrecord.com/content/2009/jun/22/zombie-wannabes-try-part-movie/

Young Girl Make Zombie Movie

An 11 year-old girl made a zombie movie. This is a good thing. Young people need to be aware of the coming apocalypse.

http://www.examiner.com/x-10191-Indie-Film-Examiner~y2009m6d20-DVD-review-Pathogen-zombie-film-by-Emily-Hagins-11-years-old

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Wild at Heart and Zombie on Top

The following is a trailer for Zombieland, a film in which Woody Harrelson plays a zombie-killing Nicholas Cage. It looks hilarious, especially when they Purrel-up after dumping a re-dead zombie body, but trailers and previews have lied to us before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfLaApNzzDY

Friday, June 19, 2009

Reader's Digest Braaains

In response to this article I sent an email to Reader's Digest proposing a special edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/business/media/19readers.html?_r=1&ref=business

NYT Still on about ZOMBIES

This writer seems to think any discussion of libretarianism is interesting. All it does is bore people. Stop messing with my beloved zombies.
http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/zombie-films-as-liberal-parables/#comment-22117

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Zombie Wedding

This is about a zombie themed wedding, which somehow sheds light on Zombie Romeo and Juliette. ref="http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/article1010642.ece"><

Shakespeare and Zombies

The Scots are somehow doing Romeo & Juliette as a zombie play, which makes sense because teens are tribalistic morons. But why not Macbeth? I have a bunch of writing on Hamlet as the ultimate zombie play. Think about it, he's stuck between the ghost of his father, a murderous, tretcherous, letcherous new dad faking madness to reject the logic the world foists upon him, he drives his girlfriend to madness and suicide, has to deal with Polonius, and everybody ends up dead. It's a tour-de-force of cultural entropy which has lead to our current Zombie Apocolypse! Don't bother telling it's not real, it's on TV. You aren't real, TV talk-person.

Why all these zombie versions? Zombies are the most potent negatively-defined cultural symbols we have of humans. That's why.

Link to a story about the Edinburgh Film Festival:
http://www.jacksonville.com/entertainment/2009-06-14/story/am_stir_shakespeare_zombies_guaranteed_hit

Friday, June 12, 2009

zombie neurobiology 'explained,' as if zombies cared

Zombie neurobiology, for those of you who still think science = legitimacy. http://io9.com/5286145/a-harvard-psychiatrist-explains-zombie-neurobiology?skyline=true&s=x

Nazi Zombies Must Die

Norwegians fight Nazi zombies, they're like Republicans but in cooler clothes, to folk music: http://io9.com/5287413/new-pole-dancing-promotion-for-dead-snow-dance-nazi-zombies-dance

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Thai Zombie

And for all those wondering how to write zombie in Thai script: โดย : Zombie.

Pushkin Heroine in Distress (and Clubbers Doing the Zombie Shuffle)

The New York Times seems to include zombies everyday. Will you be ready when Pushkin comes (back) to shove?

Dance Review | 'Onegin'

Pushkin Heroine in Distress (and Clubbers Doing the Zombie Shuffle)

Published: May 31, 2009

"Mr. Eifman treats the rest of his company like backup dancers in a music video. (There are echoes of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”) Whether zombie creatures, disaffected youth or chic characters in a nightclub, the performers have little to go on."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/arts/dance/01eifm.html?ref=dance

Zombie Theory

Memory Distortions in Coerced False Confessions:
A Source Monitoring Framework Analysis
LINDA A. HENKEL1* and KIMBERLY J. COFFMAN2
1Fairfield University, USA
2Florida International University, USA
SUMMARY
Confessions are routinely offered as evidence and are potentially damning to defendants. However,
not all confessions are truthful. Suspects can be coerced into falsely confessing to crimes that they
did not commit, and in a subset of cases, the confessors come to genuinely believe they committed
the crimes and sometimes create vivid ‘memories’ of their activities. Against the backdrop of a
model of cognitive processes involved in correct and incorrect remembering known as the source
monitoring framework, this paper examines how coercive tactics routinely used in interrogations
may give rise to memory illusions and distortions that can contribute to false confessions in which
individuals believe they are guilty and create false memories to support those beliefs. Copyright
# 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Which means that if you predend to be a zombie, you might turn into one.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Zombie Font

William Saffire might be a conservative speechwriter, but that doesn't mean the NYTimes can't give his 'On Language' column cool fonts for the headlines. Check this out: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/magazine/17wwln-safire-t.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=zombie&st=cse.

ZNN is Undead

Welcome to ZNN: Zombie News Network. Our name is pronounced, "Znnnnnnn." Here you will find news about all things zombie with a particular focus on tracking news from other, possibly reputable, sources. For example, nytimes columnist Paul Krugman recently wrote an op-ed entitles, "Zombie Financial Ideas," about Treasury policy. Here's a link: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/zombie-financial-ideas/

Here is a version of Zombie Theory that I wrote:

What We Talk About When We Talk About Zombies:
An Introduction to Zombie Theory

Charlie Reis

“Hacked Road Signs Warn of Zombie Apocalypse.” Archive Nerdvana, February 15, 2009

“Why do I have to choose between heaven and hell… when there are so many others places I can to go?” The Imaginary Boys Chapter One: Crossroads

“Move Over, Jane Austin. Now Lincoln Meets the Vampires.” NYT, April 14, 2009

You Look Terrible

As a culture, even a global one, we have spent much time and energy telling one another zombie stories. One thing our stories do is to tell us about ourselves. So what’s with all the brain-devouring, blood-splattered fiends?

No one outside of philosophy classes and relationships actually gives any credence to the problem of other minds. It’s an artificial problem in the way that a robot is an artificial worker. Make that robot out of flesh and you have a zombie. In ‘reality’ a zombie is someone with reduced neurological function. It is a body without a mind.

The US Army labels those that score the lowest on intelligence tests as goons; the second lowest scorers are labeled zombies.

The nature of our experience of the world only reveals an intimacy with the thoughts that we each individually have. So the opposing world, that which isn’t us or I, is an aggregation of things, not minds. I’m writing this because I want it to be published and read. I believe in other minds; my act of writing (unless I’m a scribble zombie) presupposes that.

Writing and publishing, two things people do in the world, are hard. Doing anything in the world seems hard. The world isn’t you. It doesn’t care about you. Most jobs in the world rely on structures which keep bodies docile and minds inactive. The world, particularly the world of work, wants you to be a fleshy robot. It wants to bite and infect you, to eat your brain, to remorselessly consume your humanity. More, your humanity itself will consume you. The Ancient Greeks summed up the totality of life through their alphabet, that’s why we have the expression ‘the alpha to the omega.’

In English, this is ‘from a to z.’ The arc which is a human life begins at birth and ceaselessly, mindlessly, marches towards death. We all go from Point A to Point Zombie. I’m sorry to be so gloomy, but the nature of time is inescapable. No one has not died. No one will not die. (You too, Dick Cheney.) The metaphysical position we’re in dictates this. As the world churns up difference at an increasingly alarming rate, it is less of a home for us. It is a home for zombies. Are you late for work or has the virus of telecommuting invaded your home?

In literature or grammar, the world is an it, an other, something which is described in the third person. Zombies oppose humans, which is the main reason zombie stories are so useful to us today. They are stories of loss, loneliness and confusion. They describe our experience living with H1N1, AIDS, Kim Jung Il, Blackwater Security (now rebranded as Xe,) Facebook, twitter and the all idiots we all deal with all day, every day.

Enter Emily

Emily the Strange, like Betty Boop before her, doesn’t mind the darkness. She knows that strange is not a crime. She doesn’t care if she’s a zombie. Characters like Emily reject the logic foist upon them and do what they like. (Recall that hirsute, drooling men continually chased Betty, and that she often escaped by dancing away and disappearing into an inkwell.) Emily is a more modern iteration of the notion that young girls have inherent worth and dignity. You disagree, get lost.

William James famously said that the problem of free will and determinism is pointless because even if we’re always already determined, we have to act as if we had free will. To be or not to be all that you can be means you first have to enlist, then suffer the slings and arrows of basic training.

Emily and Betty are what I call first person zombies. They embrace a logic of darkness, rather than stand under the identificatory glare of the adult world. I myself feel empathy to these characters when I think about that which dehumanizes and controls: police, clergy, most bosses, homeland security, Dostoevskian clerks or my sister.

Security Regulations at Tol Sleng Prison, Phenom Phen, Cambodia

1. You must answer accordingly to my questions. Don’t turn them away.
2. Don’t try to hide facts by making pretexts, this and that, you are strictly prohibited to contest me.
3. Don’t be a fool, for you are a chap who dared to thwart the revolution.
4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.
5. Don’t tell me either about your immoralities or the essence of the revolution.
6. While getting lashes or electrification you must no cry at all.
7. Do nothing sit still and wait for my orders if there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something you must do it right away without protesting.
8. Don’t make pretexts about Kampuchea in order to hide your jaw of traitor.
9. If you don’t follow all the above rules you will get many many lashes of electrical wire.
10. If you disobey any points of my regulations you must get either ten lashes or five shocks of electrical discharge.

They don’t say if you get to choose between lashes or shocks on menu number ten. I believe the question itself would get your order supersized. In any event, you’re not allowed to have any braaaains. Even if our ontological situation, that of living in time, dictates our experience is incomplete and that we will suffer, we can do something instead of nothing. In other words, even if you’re a zombie, be your own fiend.

The Incredible Hulk is slave to his rage. Bruce Banner doesn’t want to hurt anybody. It is only after some is warned, “Angry? You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” that most traces of rationality become engulfed by rage. He also turns green. You can’t really know yourself all that well anyway, so make sure your engulfment doesn’t turn you into a rage monster. Remember that charming scarecrow who hung out with Dorothy? He only wanted a brain.

You’re One of Us, You’re One of Us

If we have first and third person zombies, what about second? The essence of tribalism is belonging, us-being-together. People all over the world get together for zombiecons, flash-mob-like parties where the living, which is synonymous with undead, get together to have fun pretending they’re zombies. Other people watch traffic at NASCAR rallies, buy Kate Spade bags, or attend klan meetings. (Has anyone noticed that the klan can’t even spell clan.) Environmentalism and recycling are popular now. Composting is the recycling of organic material to grow something new. Are you a part of that tribe? Making zombies, like teaching about being green, is earth-friendly. Why poison the ground with people’s remains?

A second person zombie is a member of a tribe that rejects the living world for that of the undead, and they haven’t even been promised a specific number of virgins. Zombies are fun, profane and often sexy. Vampirella, call me; I’m full of blood.

Zombie stories are our stories and that’s why they’re human.