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

Savage Chickens

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

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

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

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.

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/

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