Prosthetic Conscience

Dead Loves, by Ian McDowell

This zombie storie has one of the sickest, yet truest-to-life images I’ve ever read. In a world recovering from the zombie plague, where the reanimation of the dead is an everyday occurrence, anti-abortion protestors carry reanimated fetuses in jars on their picket lines. This may be in violation of the “Gingrich Act,” which forbids the possession of a reanimated corpse, and specifies that all corpses are to be pithed like a frog in high-school biology lab. The protestors want to be found in violation of the act, as it only forbids possession of reanimated human remains, and successfully prosecuting them under the act would legally establish fetuses as human beings.

Even after the end of the world, everything is political.

[ Posted: 12:46] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Zombies arrested in downtown Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Six friends spruced up in fake blood and tattered clothing were arrested in downtown Minneapolis on suspicion of toting “simulated weapons of mass destruction.”

Complete story

[ Posted: 06:36] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

re: Your Brains

Lo: a music video for Jonathan Coulton‘s song “re: Your Brains”. It’s a lot of fun. Even if you’re afraid of zombies and gore, don’t be afraid to watch this video — it’s very funny and the imagery is tame.

[ Posted: 15:29] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Fashion Freak

Please enjoy the video for “Fashion Freak”, by Naked Ape. It’s very.

[ Posted: 11:00] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Zombie Food Pyramid

A revolution in fashion.

[ Posted: 14:47] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Hufu! The healthy human flesh alternative!

I can’t believe I’m so late in finding out about this. But it’s very exciting, and they have recipes. Now vegetarian zombies aren’t stuck just eating GRAAAIIIIINNNNSSSSS.

[ Posted: 16:24] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Land of the Dead review

So, it’s been like a month since I watched George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead, and I still haven’t written a review. That’s partly because there’s just so much to say about it, and partly because I’m so busy.

In the meantime, The Nation’s Stuart Klawans has reviewed it, along with two other current horror movies. It’s a very positive review, especially in contrast to his treatment of War of the Worlds and Dark Water. Go, read.

Edit: The whole article is, unfortunately, only available to Nation subscribers, and BugMeNot doesn’t have a password. You’ll just have to subscribe!

[ Posted: 06:49] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Man eats wife, chokes and dies

In the news:

Two KwaZulu-Natal girls have been left traumatised after witnessing their father eat the flesh off their dead mother’s face on Friday morning, police said.

[ Posted: 16:05] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Weise and Zombies

According to TexasZombie, the recent school shooting at Red Lake, MN is acquiring a zombie connection, too.

“… Weise was also able to write more polished prose for stories published on the Internet about zombies…”

“…Weise’s Hotmail address links him to frequent postings on one Internet forum called “Rise of the Dead,” a site where contributors collaborate on stories about “average people attempting to survive in a zombie-infested world,” according to the site.

“…Weise, posting under the handle “Blades11,” appeared to be a regular contributor to numerous fan fiction sites related to zombies. On one, Weise identifies himself as being from Red Lake and lists himself as an amateur writer…”

I agree with TZ that if word of this spreads around, there’s liable to be a backlash. Why can’t psycho killers write HP/Draco slash fic, instead, hmmm?

[ Posted: 21:11] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Zombie Scenario Survivor Test

So, someone has come up with a quiz to see if you would survive a zombie infestation scenario. It’s a little too gun-focused, for my taste. What good is destroying a zombie if the noise brings 20 more of them?

[ Posted: 17:12] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Student arrested for writing zombie fiction

From All Flesh Must Be Eaten: a high school student was arrested for writing zombie fiction. The authorities claim the story “outline[s] possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police.” The police have admitted they know it’s fiction, but still consider it a felony. A judge raised the student’s bond from one thousand to five thousand dollars, because of the “seriousness” of the charges.

Furrfu, what does it say about the world when I can’t decide whether to file a story under “Politics” or “Zombies”? I guess, as Lori said, if you let a child write zombie fiction, it could lead to an unhealthy adult obsession ;)

[ Posted: 08:13] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Junk

Okay, this is a capsule review (meaning, I’m too lazy to sit down and actually think about what I’m going to write about and make logical, coherent arguments) of the Japanese zombie movie Junk: Shiryô-gari. Spoilers are included (what kind of review doesn’t have spoilers?), so be forewarned, if you care.

Junk is what’s been called a Japanese “blender” movie. One genre isn’t enough, so they throw a couple into the blender. In this case, it’s a heist/mob doublecross film with zombies. Some first-time jewel thieves set up a meeting to sell their booty (oh, watch the search-engine hits roll in!) to the Yakuza. The meeting is at an abandoned (American) military base, which unfortunately, the military is actually still using for an “off-the-books” project on returning the dead to life. Zombie mayhem ensues, involving the jewel thieves, the Yakuza, a couple of military scientists, a horde of slow, mindless flesh-eaters, and one fast, smart zombie (the experimental subject who started the outbreak, and who incidentally is the late wife of the scientist who started the project).

Now, I should explain why I like zombie movies. I like zombie movies because they, ideally, depict the complete breakdown of society in the face of a danger that is ongoing (unlike post-plague or post-nuclear-apocalypse scenarios), relatively personal (zombies eating you are much easier to have a feel for compared to anonymous nuclear strikes or the earth being eaten from the inside-out by a black hole), and symbolically rich (mindless consumers, loss of individuality, man’s inhumanity to man). The fact that the zombies are less of a threat to the careful protagonist than are other humans is a bonus that will be found in the better class of flesh-eating-zombie films. Therefore, for me, the perfect zombie movie will involve a global catastrophe, a few people struggling for survival, hordes of slow, shambolic zombies, unnecessary and stupid betrayal, and lots of people having their flesh eaten.

So, how does Junk measure up? Well, I can’t say it’s in the top tier of zombie films like Romero’s trilogy (soon to be tetralogy) or 28 Days Later. It’s not a film that absolutely had to be made. But it’s not actually a bad film, like many other horror films on its budgetary level are. The plot is cobbled together from clichés, but it holds together well enough to do the job. Many reviewers have commented on how bad the acting is, especially from the Americans playing American military personnel; I think the problem is actually that their dialog was translated directly from Japanese, and that they were instructed to deliver it in the way that they did so that they would be intelligible to a Japanese audience with some knowledge of English. Or maybe it’s just a stylistic convention — many of their lines sounded like English-dubbed anime. The gore effects were also rather stylized, and in some cases a bit excessive (the gushing blood from where jewel thief Akira was stabbed in the foot with a pair of office scissors during the robbery, for example). The zombie makeup is mostly quite good, though the wounds, tearing flesh, and entrails are very early-’80s Savini. With these complaints, what’s good about it? Well, despite the low budget, it actually manages to be rather stylish, feeling like a live-action anime production. The characters mostly behave in fairly sensible ways. Somehow, it just fails to scream “I’m a bad, bad movie.” If you’re a fan of zombie movies, it’s definitely worth watching on the level of entertainment, but it’s not really a significant addition to the genre.

Overall rating: 5/10 — I went into it with dramatically low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised.

[ Posted: 14:15] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Zombies!

Okay, I decided that I’m not only going to blog about important, serious, responsible things like politics and philosophy, but about stupid things that I think about. So I have initiated a zombies section! This is mainly to keep me writing, so that I am a “producer” rather than only a consumer on the web. Some time soon, I want to write a little bit about choice of weapons in a zombie apocalypse situation, but I’m not going to spend the time on it right now.

I am going to link to Rise, by Gareth Wood, an excellent zombie story, currently the length of a short novel and apparently still under construction. Much better than the average NOTLD fan-fic. I’ve been scaring myself with a chapter a day for the better part of a week so far.

[ Posted: 15:25] | [ Category: ] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]