Twitter the 21st Century Telegraph.

I should probably just forget about twitter and move on. In the super information age do we really need to reinvent the telegraph?

All twitter really is, is the telegraph, the telegraph without purpose, and the cool sounds. Do we need a telegraph on the information super highway?

Do we need to send a very short message, forget about the art of writing, just send the information? It's the telegraph, except now everyone can send the messages, no telegraph operators, no wires, just tweets; so everyone tweets, great world changing messages, messages like I love bagels.

Sorry it's breakfast time and bagels sound good. I think you know what I mean though do we really need to send the tweets about everything?

My first take on twitter was not to bother. I have no need for the telegraph, unless of course it made the really cool noises and I could end every line with the word stop.

I also don't want to be a curmudgeon, so I kept thinking about it. And I kept coming across it. Which got me to try it again.

I've been on a political jag lately, so I thought I'd tweet about politics. It's been an interesting challenge. Making something meaningful fit in 140 characters or less.

I wanted to write something about the BP oil spill. I wanted to ask:

Why the hell is anyone shocked by the oil spill? It seems to be the status quo. Big multinational companies do what ever it takes to make money, that's their job. They'd sell grandmas if there was a market for grandma selling. So why are people shocked that BP cut corners, and created this mess. It's a lot cheaper for them to pay a few fines and stick the tax payer with the clean up than to actually fix the problem before it happens. It's their business model and it makes them billions every year.

That's what I wanted to tweet, but the big red numbers said I was -362. What? 362 useless characters including spaces. Of course that was total bull shit and twitter and tweeting suck.

I decided to play with the tweet, just to see if I could get the same idea out in so few words. Here's what I came up with.

Shocked by the BP spill? The purpose of a mega corp is money - it will make decisions in the interest of money - not public interests.

I think it actually got my point across, but I had to lose the grandma joke. It was a bad day in the history of grandma jokes, but an interesting day as a writer. I could get my message across in very few words, without losing the message.

I know even though I tweeted, no one read the tweet. In the tweetosphere there are more important things, than the BP oil spill, like bagels and marketing. Not having an audience has never stopped me from writing though, and now it won't stop me from tweeting.

I'm still not sure I get twitter, the 21st century telegraph, but I think maybe twitter has a purpose as a writing tool, at least for me.

Let The Paper Dump begin

A lot of things in cyber space are very different that their real world component. Teaching isn't one of them. This is the end of the semester for my students in Texas and it's exhausting me. My general rule when teaching is I don't care when a student hands in their work. It's more important to me that they do hand in. I try very hard to get rid of all the bull shit assignments, so the assignments I require are, for me, the really important ones.

Needless to say, I get paper dumped at the end of the term. This makes me tired and cranky, but gives the kids the chance they need. I know other teachers who strictly enforce due dates, and I've seen lots of kids take a zero because they couldn't get an assignment in on time. This seems to be really pointless. Unless of course the content of that assignment wasn't really important to begin with. If the work was essential for their progress, isn't it better to make sure they do it rather than enforce a time line?

It's better for the student, but like I said it makes me cranky, not kick the dog cranky, that takes W, but cranky never the less. It also interferes with my ability to write anything worth while. I have a few blog posts I've been working on but can't seem to really tweak to the point I like them.

I'll try to get them up soon, especially the third part of the zombie zeitgeist.

Horatio Alger Was A Liar.

So every time I start reading about zombies in Haiti, I eventually wind up thinking about Horatio Alger. I know the link seems weird, and maybe it’s weird that I frequently read about zombies in Haiti, but it’s what I do. Some people watch Lost or sports I read about the secrets of Haiti’s living dead, and then obsess about Horatio Alger and I question my own beliefs; my personal zombie antidote.

Rather than dwell on why zombies in Haiti are interesting, let me just say read my earlier post here. It sums ups everything you wanted to know about real zombies but were afraid to ask. In a nutshell -- beliefs cause zombies.

Horatio Alger was a writer and quite a prolific one. In the 19th century he books, and lots of them. See the wiki if you’re not sure. His books, all zillion of them, had the same plot. Poor schmuck works hard, plays by the rules, and voila a hundred pages later he is a captain of industry. Americans ate it up. All you had to do was work really hard, didn’t matter if you were a shoe shine boy or a flower girl you too could become the new rich. Most importantly of all you deserved it. Just pull yourself up by the bootstraps; he coined that phrase, by the way.

Maybe Alger was the first self-help guru. Maybe he was just a hack novelist — with a formula. Maybe he was just a good liar. Whatever the case his message has inevitably shaped America and anyone who grows up here.

At our core we believe in Meritocracy, a fancy word I picked up in college to describe the rags to riches story, the belief that the people who get ahead deserve it. It’s one of our unquestionable beliefs. If you work hard you will get ahead.

Don't get me wrong I think people can get ahead. My beef is with what meritocracy implies.

What does that say about people who haven’t gotten ahead? What does it say about people who have tried and failed? Answer these questions and I think you have every Tea party slogan out there. IF you can't reach the top, it's your own damn fault.

If you think about it his whole message is just a merit based version of social Darwinism or Eugenics. People who fail deserve to fail. God, fortune, genetics, whatever has doomed certain people to the life of the underling, unless of course they work really hard and play by the rules. Working hard and being the best shoe shine boy or flower girl is essential to the Alger myth.

Anyone can reach the top.

Really! How many fucking shoe shine boys have become captains of industry?
Name one, Mr. Alger.

Related Articles

• Kathleen Parker: The high-tech fairy tale of Antoine Dodson (commercialappeal.com)


• The Internet's unlikely star (timesunion.com)


• F*ck Horatio Alger (yougabsports.com)


• Lauren Leto Says Goodbye to All That, Hello to New York (observer.com)


• Horatio Alger Gets Remixed: GalleyCat Readers Re-Write 'Joe's Luck' (huffingtonpost.com)

Synthetic life and the curse of a creative mind.

It's a weird world. This week we created the first synthetic life.

I want to be really positive about our scientific achievements, on the other hand distopia is a compelling thought. I guess it's the curse of being creative. When I learn something my mind wanders into countless possibilities of what might happen.

I can remember when I took microbiology in college. I learned two things from taking micro. First sterile practices completely elude me and I was constantly sick. The second thing I learned was at the end of my third term, my notes rarely covered the lectures.(I got pneumonia the first time I tried to take micro and had to withdraw. I got strep throat the second and had to withdraw. The third time I pushed vitamin C, took a multi-vitamin and was sick, but not seriously the whole semester. I think I passed with a C)

On the bright side my lecture notes from micro were filled with really great ideas for science fiction. In fact my micro notes were more about designer viruses tailored to specific genotypes. Or what would happen when a super bug got loose. I think my favorite notes were about a virus that rewrote your genetic code, basically it changed you from the base cells up. I may have revisit that as a story idea.

My mind still works this way. I love science and I love technology, but when I hear about it I have to let my mind wander and wonder where it might take us. While Craig Venter makes synthetic life seem so normal, and yet amazing I have to wonder where do we go from here? Are we creating a better world where we can design a bacteriophage that specifically eats cancer cells? Or are we just days away from unleashing, accidentally of course, the virus to start the zombie apocalypse? Does it seem strange to anyone else this discovery was announced during zombie awareness month?

Either way my mind is racing with possibilities. Below is the TED talk announcing the birth of synthetic life.
[ted id=863]

Writing For Different Formats. Or Writing for the web.

Writing for the web, writing for residuals, freelance writing, and writing for publication can be very different things.

When I've taught writing or speech I've spent a lot of time talking to students about adapting for different audiences. Now that I'm writing for myself here and taking on some freelance work I'm fining I have to write for a whole new audience. Some of writing for the web is pretty common sense. Things like if you don't get your readers attention in the first few lines they'll click away. If you use to many big words they'll click away. If you use to many rhetorical devices, they'll click away.

And yes I know I just used three rhetorical statements and a big word all in the same paragraph. Irony? Nope I needed to use the best word possible and three rhetorical statements is about the max a reader can handle at once.

Like I said a lot of web writing is common sense if you've written in any other medium. What has not been common sense is learning about choosing the right words. Writing for different formats described exactly what I wanted this blog post to be about, so that's what I named it. Unfortunately no one would ever see it.

Readers find what you've written because they are searching for something similar. Very few peole would be looking for writing in different formats, on the other hand a lot of peole are looking for how to write for the web.

I know for most people this probably doesn't mean much. And right now it doesn't mean much for my writing in the Library, but for the freelance work I'm doing to earn residuals (notice how I just worked those words back in.) it can make a huge difference. Potential buyers of my editorials and how to's want to know that those articles will grab people who are searching for similar topics.

As a writer I find myself needing to be aware of those little differences in word choice if I want anyone on the web to read what I wrote. If I ever finish the novel that started me blogging those tools will be essential if it's to get the traffic it needs to get noticed.

I hope as a writer I just have enough ethics to not change the name of my novel from say Romeo and Juliet to hot under aged drunken porn. Although I bet the later would get a lot more readers.

The Truth About Zombies

Zombies are everywhere in popular culture today, and film maker George Romero helped re-introduce them to the modern audience. Romero defined the modern movie zombie. The ghouls, as he first called them, are flesh eating undead. The zombie evolution doesn’t start with Romero; it has its roots in history, myth, legend, and fact.

What if I told you, before Romero there were real zombies, but they didn’t eat people? What if I told you real zombies aren't just legends to scare children? What if I told real zombies do exist, have been documented and you might be one, even if you've never practiced voodoo or been to Haiti?

What does Haiti and voodoo have to do with zombies?

Haiti is the birth place of the zombie, sorry Pittsburgh, for centuries there have been legends of voodoo priest reanimating the dead and enslaving them. Most people have dismissed these stories as mere superstition. They are just tales of things that go bump in the night designed to scare children and primitive people.

While it is easy to dismiss the stories with the uber rational western mind it's also wrong. Haitian zombies are real, and anthropologists have proved it. Wade a Davis, an anthropologist, led the research on Haitian zombies, and here's what attracted his attention.

So this zombie walks into a village:

"a man walked into l'Est?re, a village in central Haiti, approached a peasant woman named Angelina Narcisse, and identified himself as her brother Clairvius. If he had not introduced himself using a boyhood nickname and Mentioned facts only intimate family members knew, she would not have believed him. Because, eighteen years earlier, Angelina had stood in a small cemetery north of her village and watched as her brother Clairvius was buried." (1)

So many claim to be undead, why did this one get attention?

There have been many cases in Haiti of people reporting zombies, either being them or having seen them. In most cases the claims are written off. Usually dead men returning to life, in a third World country doesn’t get the attention of the scientific community, it usually gets a big yawn from the scientific community, but Narcisse was a very interesting case, he had been pronounced dead by western doctors: his claim was not easily dismissed as a mis-diagnosis.

"But Narcisse's case was different in one crucial respect; it was documented. His death had been recorded by doctors at the American-directed Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles. On April 30, 1962, hospital records show, Narcisse walked into the hospital's emergency room spitting up blood. He was feverish and full of aches. His doctors could not diagnose his illness, and his symptoms grew steadily worse. Three days after he entered the hospital, according to the records, he died. The attending physicians, an American among them, signed his death certificate. His body as placed in cold storage for twenty hours, and then he was buried."(2)

What? How did that happen?

While the details of the story are interesting and I'd encourage everyone to read them, what's more important isn't how he became a zombie, but why.

Why did he become a zombie?

It wasn’t a viral infection, toxic waste, or even a zombie bite. It was his beliefs and behaviors. Simply put Clairvius Narcisse was a jerk. He wasn't an evil person, he just wasn't a good person and a voodoo priest took notice.

Don’t piss off your Voodoo priest.

In the voodoo religion the priests act not only as religious leaders and magician, but also as judge. Most of their ceremonies are about bringing balance and justice to the world. Apparently Narcisse needed both, so a he was sentenced to zombification, and an undead life of hard labor. The priest poisoned him, buried him, and brought him back from the dead.

The priest didn't kill him, which is an important distinction to make, he poisoned him. The secret poison brought Narcisse to the verge of death, but he never crossed that threshold. All of his bodily functions were slowed to a point that they were undetectable by modern science. His heart was still beating, he was still breathing, but at such a slow rate no one could tell. He was effectively placed in suspended animation. After he was buried all the priest had to do was dig him up, give him the antidote, and voila instant zombie.

Didn’t he know he wasn’t a zombie?

I know what you're thinking, wait a minute didn't he know he wasn't a zombie? That's the interesting part, he didn't. He knew he died and he knew he was buried and he knew he was alive again. So of course he knew he was a zombie, and that's the secret to real zombies, he knew. It's all about belief.

What you know can hurt you.

The practioners of voodoo know magic is real, they know spirit possession is real, and they know zombies are real. Believe might seem like a better word choice, especially to the scientifically inclined, but believe isn't entirely correct. Believe seems a little wishy washy, there is room for doubt. Know on the other hand leaves no room for doubt. If you know something, it is true, a fact, and reality.

Knowing something changes your whole world. It makes some things possible and other things impossible. For Narcisse it made him a zombie and a slave. For several years he was zombie slave on a plantation in Haiti, until one day by chance he was separated from his work group. After wandering the country side, for weeks, his beliefs changed, and his reality changed. He was no longer a zombie slave.

Are you a zombie?


I wonder how many of the things we know, things we know are true, things we know are facts, things we know are reality, aren't? We all might want to take a good look at the things we know. How do they shape us? If you really think, it’s not just zombies about in Haiti. It’s our everyday reality. How many of the things we know are just beliefs helping to turn us into zombie slaves? Are you a zombie?



1http://windward.hawaii.edu/facstaff/dagrossa-p/articles/SecretesofHaitisLivingDead.pdf

Flesh Eating Zombies Bring Out the Best in People

How knew you could get paid the write about zombies. The following is an excerpt for an essay about Romero's movies I wrote that just got published by Associated content.

Romero's Zombies Show the Best of Us

I know it's a little late but I finally sat down to watch Diary of the Dead. Kids, work and location have kept me from seeing the movie until now. I have to say it was worth the wait. I know many fans and critics weren't thrilled with the movie, but I think it is a great addition to Romero's zombies. The film really shows Romero's evolution as a film maker.

Diary of the Dead followed a group of film students and their professor through the beginning days of a zombie apocalypse. Like other Romero films it is filled with political commentary, gore, and of course people surviving the worst days of their lives.

Conclusion

Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide

OOh I so want this book. I just read this book review, and now I want the book. Anyone want to get me an early Christmas present?

The Best Guide for Everything Zombie Related!
If you are a zombie film fan and wanted to know about all the zombie films ever made than Glenn Kay's exhaustive book Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide is everything you wanted to know about the genre and more. Kay's book is one of the easiest books to navigate through with chapters on each decade starting from the '30s and going up until present day. Each chapter lists both the major and minor zombie films released and even comments on foreign films as well as digital video and straight to DVD and cable films.
full review

Zombies and Weapons of Mass Destruction.

So, maybe the zombie apocalypse is a real threat. I mean it would have to be, right, Bush said so. I wonder if they're hiding with the weapons of mass destruction? Or maybe they're in a chapter of MY Pet Goat. Hopefully Fox will pick the story up,that way we then we'll know it's for real.

George Romero

What would zombie awareness month be with out a little fan worship of George Romero? I've been writing zombie zeitgeist part three and an essay about real zombies. Editing takes time, a lot of time and when I'm happy with them I'll be posting them to the blog. In the mean time I've been reading up on Romero planning to salute his legacy, I think this essay says just about everything I would.
The Man Who's Resurrected More Things Than Just Zombies
In 1968 director George A. Romero released his ground breaking film Night of the Living Dead to audiences all around the world and thus history was made. No film before this had ever conceived of using the rarely used "zombie" as a means in which to tell an elaborate story about humanity and dread. The film became an instinct success story not just for Romero but for the zombie genre as well seeing as though it is the film to which all other zombie films are compared. Romero would expand on his apocalyptic world in which the dead rise to menace the living with the films Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), Land of the Dead (2005), and most recently with Diary of the Dead (2007).

Romero was born in 1940 in New York, New York where he lived until moving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he attended the renowned Carnegie-Mellon University. It was here where he would start his career in filmmaking with mostly commercials and short films under his company Image Ten Productions in the 1960s. With co-founder John A. Russo they put together the $100,000 to produce their first feature length film Night of the Living Dead which made them more money then what they put into it and thus started them on a successful career path.

It was several years before Romero's next financial success Dawn of the Dead but between these two films he filmed several noteworthy yet largely forgotten films including the little seen There's Always Vanilla (1971), The Crazies (1973), Hungry Wives (1972), and Martin (1977). Although little seen except for those of avid followers of his films, these films allowed Romero to continue to craft and hone his storytelling abilities including his proclivities to sprinkle biting political and cultural commentaries in all of his films.

The rest of the article

Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack

You have to love the Onion. I wonder if Pittsburgh still loves George? I also wonder if Ptt isn't prepared, who is?

Study Reveals Pittsburgh Unprepared For Full-Scale Zombie Attack

October 19, 2005 | ISSUE 41•42

10.13.99 PITTSBURGH—A zombie-preparedness study, commissioned by Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy and released Monday, indicates that the city could easily succumb to a devastating zombie attack. Insufficient emergency-management-personnel training and poorly conceived undead-defense measures have left the city at great risk for all-out destruction at the hands of the living dead, according to the Zombie Preparedness Institute.

Pittsburgh, a prime target of the undead."When it comes to defending ourselves against an army of reanimated human corpses, the officials in charge have fallen asleep at the wheel," Murphy said. "Who's in charge of sweep-and-burn missions to clear out infected areas? Who's going to guard the cemeteries at night? If zombies were to arrive in the city tomorrow, we'd all be roaming the earth in search of human brains by Friday."

Government-conducted zombie-attack scenarios described on the State Department's website indicate that a successful, citywide zombie takeover would take 10 days, but according to ZPI statistician Dr. Milton Cornelius, the government's models fail to incorporate such factors as the zombies' rudimentary reasoning skills and basic tool use.

"Today's zombies quickly learn to open doors, break windows, and stage ambushes," Cornelius said. "In one 1985 incident in Louisville, a band of zombies was able to lure four paramedics and countless law-enforcement officials to their deaths by commandeering an ambulance radio and calling for backup."

ZPI researchers noted that tens of thousands of Pittsburgh citizens live in close proximity to a cemetery. This fact, coupled with abnormally high space-radiation levels in eastern Pennsylvania and ongoing traffic issues in the East Hills and Larimer areas, led Cornelius to declare the likelihood of a successful evacuation as "slight to impossible."

"The designated evacuation routes would be hopelessly clogged, leaving many no choice but to escape by foot," Cornelius said. "Add a single lurching zombie into that easily panicked crowd and you've got a nightmare scenario."

Cornelius' model shows that after the ensuing stampede, "the zombie could pick and choose his victims," and predicts the creation of hundreds of new undead "in a single half-hour feeding frenzy."

Pittsburgh's structural defenses are particularly inadequate. The city's emergency safe houses, established by a city ordinance in the early '70s, lack even the most basic fortifications for zombie invasion.

Pittsburgh residents participate in a zombie-preparedness training exercise in 1998."Under the ordinance, wooden tool sheds and rusty station wagons are classified as adequate shelter," Cornelius said. "But once dozens of zombies hungering for living flesh begin pounding on the walls and driving their half-decomposed fists through the windows, sheds and cars quickly give way."

Federal Undead Management Agency spokesperson Dr. Sheena Aurora downplayed the ZPI report, arguing that zombies move slowly and can be easily overpowered. Aurora advised citizens to look over their shoulders frequently, adding that a large shopping mall can serve as a "long-term, even fun" refuge from zombies.

Such assertions alarm zombiologist Olivier Baptiste, who calls FUMA's information "hopelessly outdated."
Full article.

Zombies Make a Comeback in Our Popular Culture

Today I wanted to just leave a quick entry. Grading papers and trying to write high quality posts is taking up a lot of time. I found this essay to be really interesting. It's a different take on the zombie zeitgeist.

[caption id="attachment_265" align="alignleft" width="189" caption="original poster for Night of the living Dead. Image is public Domain."][/caption]Zombies Make a Comeback in Our Popular Culture
Zombies seem to be all over the place now. They have taken over the spot as the top monster in our popular culture. It used to be that Frankenstein was the favorite. The vampires have risen
in popularity too, but they have always been in the forefront of literature and movies.

But nowadays, you can't seem to go anywhere without stumbling into a zombie or two. There's, of course, Rob Zombie. There are new movies out about zombies, and I'm sure that the toys will be coming soon. A popular novel tells the story of one particular zombie who moves back in with his parents and faces a lot of ensuing problems. Full article

Regan zombie

I have tried very hard to stay away from politics on this blog. Of course my political views bleed through from my unconscious into my writing. The novel is filled a vision of the future where current policies and politics have gone astray. As Ray Bradbury said, "I write science fiction not to predict the future, but to prevent it." So politics has it's place in my writing.

But not in the Blog, until now. Continuing with zombie awareness I present a news story from the onion, which like all good satire is funny on one level and sadly true on so many more. I'll let you decide what's funny and what's true.


Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

Zombies are every where, even Southern Illinois.

[caption id="attachment_252" align="alignleft" width="140" caption="public domain from Original movie"][/caption]Since zombies have exploded exponentially in recent years I though I look around for more ideas about them. Not that long ago I wrote a paper Called “They’re Coming to Get You, Barbara: The Changing Role of Women in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.” When I wrote that paper and sent it to conference there was almost no research on zombie films. Between the internet and the zombies zeitgeist there are millions of papers, essay, and articles about zombies now. O f course, not everything out there is academic in nature, there's is badly written fan fiction, movie reviews, attempts at cultural criticism, and some I'm not sure what to call. Like the excerpt below, it's a fun read not to be taken too seriously. At least I hope the author didn't mean it to be taken too seriously.

[caption id="attachment_253" align="alignleft" width="137" caption="From the remake of Night"][/caption]

The Zombies Are Coming! the Zombies Are Coming!
Has the zombie apocalypse begun - in America's heartland no less? A local television station in southern Illinois reported on April 9 that a man attacked and bit four women in Franklin County in southern Illinois the
evening before. The news report stated that the biting man was so out-of-control, authorities who responded at the scene of the attack attempted to subdue him with a tazer but it seemed to have no effect on him.

All of this is typical zombie behavior: A desire to eat human flesh and a seeming inability to be stopped by conventional methods.

Southern Illinois is a beautiful area that is known for its unusual natural landscapes and scenery. Apparently, southern Illinois can now boast that zombies are part of the scenery. For those of us who have been preparing for such an event, it is surprising that it could start in our area.

Click here for the full article.

Diary of the Dead

[caption id="attachment_240" align="alignleft" width="220" caption="Still from night. Diary would be better, but it\'s not public domain."][/caption]I know it's a little late but I finally sat down to watch Diary of the Dead. Kids, work and location have kept me from seeing the movie until now. I have to say it was worth the wait. The film really shows Romero's evolution as a film maker.Dairy of the Dead followed a group of films students and their professor through the beginning days of a zombie apocalypse. Like other Romero films it is filled with political commentary, gore, and of course people surviving the the worst days of their lives.

Many of the characters we are introduced to die off during the film as they are searching for a safe place. There are lots of moments where Romero's social criticisms felt almost out of place, he spent a lot of time pondering new media, and I'm not sure if he's made up his mind about it. He also returned to his more traditional questions and criticisms in Diary. The film ended with the protagonist asking if we are worth saving.

This question has been a consistent theme throughout all of Romero's work, and the remake of night. While his critiques of our flaws, mindless consumers, cruel rednecks, corrupt military, and useless infrastructure are all very valid complaints about the state of humanity I'd like to point out our inherent goodness is also shown through his films.

Zombies spread because inherently we are good, we try to care for others, our loved ones or even strangers and that's what puts us at risk of being bitten. If we never reached out to help, or never tried to fight, if we never had trouble shooting the zombies then we'd never have the zombie apocalypse.

Just a thought.

Here's the trailer if you haven't seen it.
Diary of the Dead

The Zombie Zeitgeist? Part 2

[caption id="attachment_225" align="alignleft" width="220" caption="Still from Night of The Living Dead. Public Domain"][/caption]Today Zombies are everywhere(1) and we owe it all to George Romero. Like his creation he bit into popular culture and infected us with the zombie. 1968’s Night of the Living Dead(2) changed popular culture forever. He offered us a vision of the macabre like we had never seen before. A slow moving mindless killing machine that could destroy all of us and despite its rotting flesh and putrefication we didn’t want to kill it. Max Brooks, author of the 2003 The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead, attributes the zombies success to their apocalyptic nature: "Other monsters may threaten individual humans, but the living dead threaten the entire human race." "Zombies are slate wipers." (3)
While I think the zombie apocalypse is part of the meme I don’t think it fully explains the success. Nuclear war, alien invasion, along with mutant flu bugs all offer the same apocalypse, but fail to resonate as strongly with the public. Part of the draw of the zombie seems quite the opposite: there’s always the chance of being a survivor. None of the fan sites, or movies expect everyone to die. The ending of every Romero movie is fairly bleak and the heroes rarely survive, but some people do. Even though Ben is shot at the end of Night, the rednecks, who shoot him, still survive. Or at least they have a chance to survive, no matter how slim. Think about the endings of Day of the Dead(4) and Land of the Dead(5) , not only do the heroes survive, but in the case of Land even the zombies survive.

So there has to be more to the zombie than just the apocalypse.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2009-04-08-zombies-pop-culture_N.htm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2009-04-08-zombies-pop-culture_N.htm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088993/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418819/

Zombie awareness month

When I started writing about zombies yesterday I had no idea that May was Zombie awareness month. So what started as another episode in my narcissism is in fact a public service. If you want to know more about zombie awareness month check out the zombie research society. They are giving a way a zombie T-shirt a day in honor of zombie awareness month. Worth checking out if you dig the undead.

The Zombie Zeitgeist? part 1

I've had a little bit of free time, but sadly my creative muse is still on strike. I've been catching up on my movie viewing and I finally saw Zombieland. It was a fun movie worth seeing, but I'm not sure it added much to the zombie canon, but it did make me wonder why the zombie seems to be growing in popularity lately.

The zombie has always been a second rate monster. Don't get me wrong I love zombie movies, but historically they haven't been what scared us. Vampires, werewolves, witches etc. have always lead our collective fears. Not to mention since Marry Shelly science has scared the hell out of us.

The zombie has kind of sat by the way side not really frightening anyone. Case in point if you're a horror fan have you ever seen or heard of White Zombie? It's a Bela Lugosi zombie film from the thirties. My point, unless you're a die hard fan geek, no one has ever heard of it. Why, because the Zombie didn't frighten anyone. The film is filled with classic zombie voodoo priest, witch doctors, dolls, and all. Classic magic zombies just don't scare the American audience.

Romero's Night of the Living Dead seems to have changed the Zombie meme. Since 1968 zombies have become part of our collective fears. Part of what Jung would call the shadow. The collective fear lurking in our collective conscious.

Given the recent popularity of Zombieland and the growing web presence of zombie fans, and the ever growing zombie walks it seems like a good time to explore these questions: Why does the zombie scare us? And why now?