Posts Tagged ‘zombies’

Moving!

Steven and I are moving again! Pictures and a bullet-point breakdown of the pros and cons of our new place later! Right now I am too busy boxing up all of our stuff and eating weird meals that use up the food we have. Like this strange soup thing Steven made on Sunday:

He called it chili but I don’t think so

It was like… chicken, potatoes, hominy, black-eyed peas, green chilies, onion… I don’t know, it was pretty good, but also sort of strange.

Anyway, while packing up all my files, I found some exciting pieces of paper that I have, for some reason, been saving:

Oh, Professor Derrick, how are you real?

This is a paper I wrote for English 300, which was one of the few classes required by my major. It involved interviewing Rob for his juicy season-spanning knowledge and then watching a lot of clips of America’s Next Top Model on youtube. Here’s probably my favorite part:

For this reason, each season “the bitchy girl” always seems to avoid being eliminated for longer than one would have thought possible, just to maintain the level of stress and drama between the contestants. Much of this, obviously, is the editing job done after the show has been taped. For instance, in the current cycle… Monique was surprisingly quickly voted off, but, as one experienced viewer described the situation, “a bitch-vacuum was created and a new bitch was forced to emerge tot take her place, and that bitch was Melrose.”13

And, if you even have to ask, that footnote says:

13 Rob McAuliffe, American’s Next Top Model expert and avid reality television viewer

I’m sure Rob was only too excited to be featured in my bibliography. Needless to say, I got an A on this paper. And wrote Professor Derrick the most eloquent course evaluation ever.

Also squirreled away with some old Threshers reviewing my one acts badly were the original course information sheets from my student taught course, WIESS 101: Zombies in Fiction and Film. Rice has been referencing this on its latest give-us-money mailers, which is sad because it’s been five years, and you’d think in all that time another student taught course would manage to be at least as exciting, but whatever. That’s not what we’re talking about right now:

Of course that last one is Josh Langsfeld. You probably already guessed.

Here are some other highlights:

What is your past experience with zombies?
2 words: zombie. babies.–James Fox
One time I attacked Patricia pretending to be a zombie–Rachel

Why did you sign up for this course?
I feel the defensive techniques may be applicable to Baker 13–Roque
Distribution credit–Rob

How useful would you be in case of a zombie attack?
I keep a fully loaded shotgun on my person at all times. If that’s not useful I don’t know what is.–Joe Dwyer
On a scale of 1 to 10, about a 9. However, I would need to be convinced I was actually fighting zombies. Once that happened, I would be a merciless killer.–Josh Langsfeld

Vitally Important Questions of Vital Importance

It’s been brought to my attention that I am an expert in some things (zombies, Sam Neill movies) and also know a little bit about a lot of other things (sewing, Daylight Saving Time). Plus, I am totally willing to tell other people what to do! These qualities all qualify me to answer questions in my very own advice column! You don’t have to deny your secret longings anymore; I know you’ve all been waiting for this day!

My first question comes from Brian R. of Texas. Brian writes:

If there were zombie sheep, or hypothetically any zombie animal species, would they only lust after the brains of members of the same species? This is important e.g. if a certain jobless young man has dreams of someday moving to New Zealand but wants assurance that if the extremely large sheep population there were to suddenly all become zombies, he would not be at risk. Thanks!

Zombie animals are a hotly debated topic amongst those of us who may or may not frequent zombie preparedness forums. Max Brooks, my personal favorite zombie expert, calls shenanigans on this in no uncertain terms:

Brooks, M. (2003). The zombie survival guide: Complete protection from the living dead. New York: Three Rivers Press, pg 4.

Yeah, my copy of Zombie Survival Guide is highlighted in parts, but you don’t hear me lecturing you about your lack of preparedness, so…

In World War Z zombies will consume animals if no humans are available, but in the remake of Dawn of the Deadthey won’t even do that: the zombies completely ignore a dog winding its way through their horde. The Resident Evil series is on the other side of this debate, where the virus in question manages to mutate and infect dogs and birds. However, the Resident Evil series also includes random telepathy and this:

Don't even get me started on the ridiculousness of Mila's outfit

The virus in Resident Evil can apparently not only infect humans and animals, but also somehow manages to kill all plants and water on the planet. So I tend to pretty much ignore the whole thing as a fever dream and not a good source for zombie knowledge. Another movie reference that I think is relevant, particularly when discussing sheep and New Zealand is this masterpiece:

There are 40 million sheep in New Zealand... and they are pissed off!

The sheep are infected with a virus that makes them crave human flesh, and bitten humans will become sheep-men creatures, which pretty much describes a sheep version of the zombie virus jumping species. However, like in most zombie movies, the main people to be punished are hippies and evil scientists, so unless those are the jobs you’re applying for in New Zealand, I would say you’re probably safe. I don’t really buy zombie animals as a thing.

HOWEVER

Science does. I know it’s not as fun to turn to science for answers as it is B-movies and books erroneously shelved in the humor section, but there are a lot of species of insect that can be controlled by parasites. Even some forms of crab and maybe even humans? Okay, the human one is not even a huge deal, the parasite may by more likely to make men angry and women outgoing–the scientists might be confusing the parasite with alcohol. And even in many of the animals the controlling parasite doesn’t often KILL its host until the very end. There’s not really any reanimating going on here, so I would deem it zombie-like at best.

So, Brian from Texas, the short answer is, you’re safe unless you buy Resident Evil as a valid source of information. Or until the zombie virus mutates horribly!

Zombies vs. Unicorns: An Age Old Dispute

I feel like this book misled me, which is a shame because I was so sure there was no way it could be anything less than totally awesome. Here’s the cover:

Zombies vs. Unicorns


But what I first saw was the spine with ZOMBIES VS. UNICORNS glaring at me from across the library. Of course I’m going to check that out, it’s not even a question.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Wait, no, I do; I was expecting zombies and unicorns battling to the death with humans looking on as the unlucky, occasionally gored/eaten bystanders. Then I realized it was a book of short stories edited by Holly Black (Team Unicorn) and Justine Larbalestier (Team Zombie). The stories are either about zombies or about unicorns (except for Garth Nix, who has both, which does not surprise me–you know he can’t get away from dead things–but they don’t even fight, so it doesn’t count). At first, I was impressed by the veritable YA lit author powerhouse they had assembled. The list includes: Maureen Johnson, Meg Cabot, Scott Westerfeld, and Carrie Ryan among others. But not even this could placate me for long about the total lack of zombie-on-unicorn action.

Also, admittedly, I have pretty high standards. Especially where zombies are concerned, being basically a Max Brooks-approved expert on the subject. Some of the stories were about the annoying, fluffy zombies who don’t try to kill people and mostly just make brain jokes and fall in love, clearly trying to lull us into a false sense of security for the impending zombocalypse. I disapprove in the strongest possible terms. In general, I also like unicorns to be ruthless, killing machines since–come on–they have a huge freaking weapon on their heads. If I had a horn, I would totally use it to maul people until they did my bidding.

I did kind of like Meg Cabot’s unicorn, clearly a parody, which farted a delicate floral scent and was named Princess Prettypants, and Naomi Novik’s, a shifty New York unicorn who doesn’t exactly play by the Unicorn Rulebook but, damn it, he gets results. On the zombie side, Carrie Ryan wrote an awesome, kickass-girl story in her Forest of Hands and Teeth universe, which I am already a fan of, and Scott Westerfeld went with the interesting idea of showing what teens growing up in a post-zombocaylpse world would do to be cool and distance themselves from the lame adults in their lives (hint: zombie virus is the drug of choice).

All these good points aside, I cannot get behind a book called Zombies vs. Unicorns that does not actually have zombies-fighting-unicorns action. I think it would look something like this:


I knew this was a bad idea the minute Francois was run through. As I watched that sharp, shimmering horn slide through his chest, I realized we probably should have never left the mall. Sure, I was sick of that fake muzak we couldn’t figure out how to turn off, and another gang of bikers was due to break in any day, but at least we were safe. I mean, besides the hordes of undead outside, clawing at the windows and moaning for our flesh, but that’s a given anywhere these days. The unicorns, though, they never try to get indoors. Not when there’s so much fresh meat outside.

Well, relatively fresh. Unicorns, for all their sparkly mystical powers, are not known for their discriminating tastes. Flesh-hungry zombie or scared-shitless human; they don’t really care which, it’s what’s for dinner. In fact, there’s been talk that they like humans even more because they usually have to chase us down first, and you know how they love showing off their billowy, glistening mane, bonus points if it catches the light of the full moon. Although that may have been just talk.

Still, after the unicorn that had gored Francois was busy licking up his blood, I climbed a tree. Unicorns can’t climb trees, right? I was less sure of myself when a few more showed up. Could unicorns fly? I knew they weren’t technically magic, having been created by our crack team of scientists to save humanity from the zombie horde, but, since THAT hadn’t turned out according to plan, I wondered what else was wrong. I tried to stay still, but they could probably smell me.

Luckily, at that moment, a faint moan wafted towards us on the breeze. The unicorns all perked up their ears, noses wet with Francois’ blood. Yes! I thought. Zombies! Maybe they’d followed us from the mall, or maybe they’d just caught my scent, or the scent of Francois’ unrecognizable corpse. Either way, maybe it would prove enough of a distraction to the unicorns that I could get away. Zombies were easy prey–but nothing about me has ever been easy.

Whenever I write example story-excerpts I like to give everyone French names because I think it makes everything sound more like a bad historical romance novel. The main character is called Antoinette.

Noted expert Rob McAuliffe actually included a zombies/unicorns link in the brilliant final he wrote for WIESS 101: Zombies in Fiction and Film, which is still on my desktop because reading it makes me happy. Since it includes such biting social commentary (read: is about real people at Wiess) I probably should not reproduce it in full (since Charles Lena would get pissed that his careful preparations do not, in fact, render him MVP). Here is the relevant excerpt from the end, however, when Rob and I are the only ones left alive from our class:

I begin to again crumple into a ball on the floor and prepare to die. Patricia tells me to get up, because she has one last plan. It, however, was going to require a great sacrifice, our soft hair. She explains that zombies could not possibly withstand our soft hair, and once we touch them with it they will turn into unicorns. We run back to Wiess shaking our hair at zombies along the way, filling the campus with bright sparkly pink unicorns. When we get back we cut off our hair and give it to the rest of the survivors. We are able to run around campus turning all of the zombies to unicorns. Unfortunately, unicorns it turns out also have a taste for human brains, and we are all eaten. (McAuliffe, R. 2007)

In conclusion, Rob and I totally could have written this book.

Book Review: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

I first heard about this book from this award-winning book trailer for it:

I was terrified. But, since it was pretty much about zombies, I knew I would be forced to read it through my own drive to be an expert on something that scares me.
forest-hands-teeth2

It turned out to be more creepy than gory. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic Earth where the dead have been attacking for so long that the way things were before “the Return” has been almost forgotten. Mary lives in a village protected by what essentially are chain link fences, with the dead coming out of the surrounding forest every day to moan through them. Her village is led by “the Sisters”, a secretive religious group that seeks to keep the village population ignorant of any world outside the fences for their own good, claiming that the village is all that’s left of humanity. Then the fences are breached and Mary, her brother, his wife (who’s been bitten), Harry (Mary’s betrothed), Travis (the guy Mary is totally in love with and everyone knows it), and Cass (Mary’s BFF and Travis’ betrothed) escape into the woods beyond the fences with an adorable puppy and your typical Orphaned By Zombies Waif. Mary is intent on finding the ocean, while everyone else tells her she’s crazy and freaks out.

The language of the book is what I think gives it its creepiness. The zombies are always referred to as “the Unconsecrated”, giving the entire thing weirdly religious overtones. The division between humans and the unconsecrated is also more blurred than in other zombie works. In the first few chapters, Mary’s mother sees Mary’s father return to the fences as one of the Unconsecrated and throws herself towards him, getting bitten through the interlacing metal. The Sisters give her a choice of being killed by their guards before the infection spreads (the logical zombie option) or being released into the forest to join the Unconsecrated and her husband. Mary’s mother chooses to join her husband and Mary, while watching her mother convulse with zombification, suddenly starts wondering if she should have dressed her more warmly, if her mother will finally know the answers to the questions she seeks, if the Unconsecrated know something she doesn’t. Because the timing of the book is so far after the Return, the Unconsecrated aren’t viewed with the same horror and Kill-Them-All attitude as in other works where they just begin to rise. To the people of Mary’s village, they’re just part of life, and no reason to interrupt the melodrama of ridiculous love triangles.

There’s a sequel, which I think is about Mary’s daughter (yeah, she, at least, lives) called The Dead-Tossed Waves. It’s also been recently announced that they’re making a movie, maybe starring Kristen Stewart. I cannot wait for all the needless dramatic pausing and intense blinking action.

Possible Job Ideas: Zombie Games for the Wii Fit

I’m all for being healthy, but this does not really inspire me to jog in place:

If you run even more you can explore different parts of the pixelated island!

If you run even more you can explore different parts of the pixelated island!

I really feel for maximum motivation, the jogging course should be replaced by something like this:

These guys I would totally run from

These guys I would totally run from

I know it doesn’t fit Ninetendo’s cutesy image, but it would be a lot more fun. The second level could involve fighting zombies in hand to hand combat, featuring the same air punches and kicks that the Wii strength exercises do, but instead of looking at this:
wii-fit-stretch

You would be fighting, kind of like this:

And maybe after you level up, the hammer becomes a chainsaw

And maybe after you level up, the hammer becomes a chainsaw

Photo Source

I realize fighting zombies in hand to hand combat is kind of unrealistic, but it could be anything. Dinosaurs. Bears. The Mafia. I would even settle for an exercise version of Mario Teaches Typing where you punch blocks and kick giant turtles to death. I don’t understand why this idea isn’t already available, or, failing that, why I am not a millionaire right now.

The Fifth Cool Thing: MAX BROOKS

So on Tuesday night I was creating a post about five cool things and felt kind of sad that I couldn’t even think of five, and had to settle on four. LITTLE DID I KNOW that I was saving that fifth thing for something that would blow all the others out of the water (new pillows? psh). However, it was thanks to the second cool thing–my inconclusive ESL tutoring–that it was able to happen. I was supposed to meet the visiting Korean scholar in the SILS library to talk about tutoring about an hour and a half before my seminar. Knowing that deciding what day to meet–even when linguistically crippled as we are–could not possibly take an hour and a half, I picked up a copy of UNC’s questionable newspaper, The Daily Tarheel, thinking that I could at least do the crossword.

So. I got to the SILS library a little early and sat down at a table. Everyone around me was working on laptops and looking super serious. I felt slightly self conscious about sitting near them doing something silly like a crossword, so I spread the paper out and looked like I was about to analyze it for some kind of assignment. THANKFULLY my anxiety led me to actually look at the articles on the second page instead of just flipping right to the crossword in the back. So I saw this article with the headline “Zombie Attack Advice Comes to UNC”.

Naturally this led me to first think “WHAT? Am I doing a talk?” and then, since that was ridiculous, “WAIT IS MAX BROOKS DOING A TALK???” Because, honestly, who else is enough of a zombie expert to be trusted by such a large, public university like UNC? Rice may have been able to get by with just Charles Lena and me, but UNC has the money to pay for the best. If you don’t already know (for some reason, like you haven’t taken an amazing Student Taught Course about it), Max Brooks, son of Mel Brooks, wrote:

My copy is full of highlighting and underlines... AND IS NOW SIGNED

My copy is full of highlighting and underlines... AND IS NOW SIGNED

But his fame didn’t really skyrocket until he published the (more entertaining, though less informative):

Which I would recommend to anyone, since it's an amazing story

Which I would recommend to anyone, since it's an amazing story

The audio book of the above is also pretty awesome, although they cut out my favorite part, the whole stolen Chinese submarine thing. World War Z is probably one of my favorite books, not just for the zombocalypse information, but for the character studies and writing style. I used both of these as texts for WIESS 101: Zombies in Fiction and Film. Which, despite some course evaluations, was totally bitchin.

I impatiently sat through my conversation with the visiting Korean scholar, and then ran out of Manning towards the Student Union, where I had never been before. I was surprised that there wasn’t a big sign or a giant crowd at the box office, and that there were still plenty of free tickets left. Do people not REALIZE how awesome this was? I grabbed two and guarded them with my life for the rest of the day.

The lecture ended up being held in the Student Union Auditorium, which was about the size of a small movie theater, and just as drab. I would say there were about 50 people there, which is shocking considering the size of UNC and the fact that it was MAX BROOKS. The lecture was entirely about effective zombie preparedness and debunking myths perpetuated by “the mainstream zombie media”. He also mentioned how we have to overcome our cultural biases towards some groups of people who may have co-opted good ideas we’ll need to survive. Namely, our natural-born hatred of hippies. Yeah, they don’t use soap and water, but that doesn’t mean they’re stupid, and we’ll need bicycles and working together to survive the zombocalypse. He also revealed that what we call “Z Day” in the US, Canada calls “The Great Pay Back”, and that they are preparing, on that day, to raise the Maple Leaf Curtain and guard their border with sharpened hockey sticks from helplessly fleeing Americans. I never trusted them. When someone asked if he’d seen the movie Zombieland, he replied, “Oh, no, but I’ve read the book; IT’S CALLED THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE”. There’s a (possibly better) summary of this talk in today’s Daily Tar Heel.

Then afterwards he signed books (and one person’s crow bar)! I told him I’d used his book as a text in a class I taught, and he thanked me for saving lives! You’re welcome, Rob and Roque. Sorry, Rachel, but Charles Lena is going to shoot you on like Day 1 because you’re a “straggler” and a liability to his zombie fighting team. And I can’t do anything about that.

So basically thanks to visiting Korean scholar wanting to meet too early for me, it was the BEST DAY EVER.

Things That Spell Our Doom: Roanoke Edition!

I’m not sure if I was the only one obsessed with the Lost Colony of Roanoke as a kid. I found the entire thing extremely eerie, especially since I would stop listening or reading when they got to the theories about Native American attack or Spanish attack or relocation to some other part of the East coast. As a child, I firmly believed that an entire colony of people had just mysteriously vanished without a trace, possibly into some other dimension, like they had slipped too close to the edge space between Life and Death and fallen through. Or something. Whatever, I was a weird kid. Later I decided Lawrence Stager’s theory about cannibals was maybe the most ridic and therefore the most credible.

Anyway, my childhood ambition is ABOUT TO BE FULFILLED! No, not the one where I become a mailman. I am going to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke! As we speak, I am on the Outer Banks, tirelessly searching for clues. I realize that generations of fellow archeologists and crack pots have come before me, but I have one thing they don’t have: a belief in time travel. Armed with that, it should be way easy. Even easier than the time I solved the murder of Merriweather Lewis (the butler did it). So far, here is my list of time traveling suspects on this case:
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Things That Spell Our Doom–2

1. Rachel Liontas

Harmless Gullible Freshman... OR IDENTITY THIEF???

Harmless Gullible Freshman... OR IDENTITY THIEF???

She looks a little TOO happy considering we convinced her to buy most of the Wiess Garage Sale. I mean, don’t get me wrong; I love Rachel Liontas. If there was some kind of bracket system to determine The Best Freshman, she would totally be in my Final Four (now that I think about it, why DON’T we pit the freshmen against each other in a dramatic, death-defying battle for the seniors’ love? Or is that the Freshmen One Acts?). At the wildly successful Wiess Garage Sale, Rachel made off with the following from THE 434’s stash of amazingness: a coconut cup, kickball, Mystery Date Game, pirate hat, Rubix Cube, shiny pink 80s dress, hot pink toga, cowboy hat, Christmas lights, and red star sunglasses. This list is a little too calculated to be just random, impulse buying. Clearly she is amassing all of our definitive possessions in a wild bid to become THE 434 after we have gone. DO NOT BE FOOLED. Just because it is pink and sparkly does NOT mean that it is necessarily Bova!
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