30 May 2012

Is This How It Begins?

My kids are freaking about this one: On Monday, Miami police shot to death a man who was eating another man's face.

"Dad, it was a straight up zombie," said Wisdomie calling from his Pacific dive paradise—cordoned off by thousands of square miles of ocean from the non-swimming undead. "It's all a big cover-up," quoth Wisdaughter, who claimed she hasn't slept well for the last two nights.

The yutes are all atwitter: this, they fret, is the beginning of the Zombiepocalypse.

Apparently, the only reason to eat another man's face is so you can get to the brains—which, as everyone knows, is what zombies yearn to eat. Really.

And that bit about 'bath salts' (the street name for a meth-type drug) being the new LSD. "That's bullshit," they say. "It was a zombie." The cops shot the attacker several times in the arm, and he just growled at them. "Everyone knows you have to double-tap zombies to the head. That's the only way to kill one. And that's what the cops ultimately had to do." One report says they had to shoot the attacker 12 times to stop him. And that's with police weapons.

Needless to say, I told them about the era of Dahmer, Gacy, et al. They were, necessarily, impressed, but no less worried about their futures.

Shockingly, the CDC has taken down its Zombie Preparedness guide from its website. That, my friends, is indeed ominous. An NGO blog, however, seems to have taken its place for all your zombie-related pre- and post-apocalyptic needs. Bookmark the Zombie Preparedness Initiative now! I urge you.

And it may not be too late to audit the Michigan State summer class: SW 290 Surviving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse: Catastrophes & Human Behavior. It will be online.

Our polite friends in British Columbia are taking no chances. Last week was Zombie Preparedness Week in BC. Click the link for some serious tips and how to protect you and yours in case of ... well, you know. At least they'll be ready. In fact, the whole of Canuckland seems to be uniting on surviving the ZA.

I've said it before, quoting friend BDR, metaphors abound. Fear of zombies, it seems to me, represents a fear of being dead inside, of having no humanity, no human fellow-feeling, a fear of being merely a product of unconscious (often violent and destructive) drives. The recent (let's call it) hysteria among our youth about zombiepocalypse, in this regard, gives me some hope for our future. But what do I know? To them, this might be real.

And, as teh kidz say, that's what's up.











6 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Zombies are people, too!
~

Randal Graves said...

I'm not worried. I've spent many an hour traipsing through Resident Evil and its children.

Prunella Vulgaris said...

Fela needs a nod here, and, I suppose props for adding trenchant political commentary that caused riots and such...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBgewcFh-cg

Jim H. said...

@if: Thanks for the heads up.

@RG: Haven't we all? But the thing is we don't have all those magical weapons that just sort of appear. In the real ZA there're no levels to go through to earn them. Think more like the original B&W "Night of the Living Dead". Had a friend in NYC who was an extra in that—originally from Pittsburgh.

@Miss P: You are correct. That's a serious oversight, due mostly to the fact that I don't own a copy. But hey, where else you gonna' get Roky Erickson and Doc Watson in consecutive posts?

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Unauthorized zombie.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

to be clear; Unauthorized zombie-like activity.

Sheesh. You breathers will go to any lengths to borrow the coolness of zombies. It is shameless and you should have more pride.