Things We’ll Miss When the Apocalypse Comes: Mario (and the Goombas!)

Due to a series of very, very fortunate events, I currently have a Wii in my apartment.  This is very exciting for me, as the newest bit of gaming technology here beforehand was…well, my computer.  And a dusty PS2 that’s only good for playing James Bond, apparently.  But now I can play the Wii whenever I like, as long as I only feel like choosing between four games, three of which I don’t really find entertaining unless I’m drinking (Wii Sports is so much more fun that way.  Trust me).  That leaves the most fantastically infuriating game ever: Super Mario Galaxy.  If you’ve never played it, it’s a lot like every other Mario game…but on a Wii.  And it’s set in space.

Seriously, I’ve played this game at least once a day for the past two weeks.  It’s probably responsible for the fact that I haven’t posted since Friday or something (well, that and a couple birthdays).

But unless we as a society invent a more viable way to produce electricity, aka one that will work during the zombie apocalypse and that your average Jane can figure out how to work, I won’t be playing any Super Mario Galaxy after the virus starts spreading. 

Zombie Book Review: “Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament”

“If you’ve never been in a dumpster coated with industrial waste while someone stabs you with a piece of sharpened rebar, then you probably wouldn’t understand.”

S. G. Browne’s remarkable piece of zombie literature, Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament, is rich with this type of dark humor and gory goodness. Described as a rom-zom-com (romantic zombie comedy), Breathers follows the undead life of Andy Warner, a car crash victim who reanimates at his funeral, stuffed with formaldehyde and unable to speak because his mouth has been sewn shut.  Now a social pariah forced to live in his parents’ wine cellar, he faces either an eternity of boredom surrounded by Bordeaux or being shipped off to a medical research facility for “testing.”

However, when Andy begins attending Undead Anonymous meetings, he discovers a few other reasons for living, like Rita, the sexy suicide victim; Jerry, the eternally horny twenty-one-year-old; and Ray, the renegade zombie who introduces the group to the wonders of human flesh.

We’re Here, We’re Dead, Give Us Your Brains

If you’ve spent enough time on the internet in the last few years, you may have noticed the trend of people dressing up as zombies and participating in grand zombie marches, usually in big cities and sometimes to make a point about something, but usually just for the sake of wearing a lot makeup and moaning in public.  Turns out some people are creeped out by this (I’ve no idea why, it sounds so awesome), and they especially don’t like it when a group of zombies disrupts their shopping time.

Back in 2006, a group of people dressed as zombies shuffled around the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, Minnesota, carrying bags of audio equipment that they used to broadcast their words to their consumer zombie counterparts, things like “Get your brains here!”  Regrettably, this article about the zombie protesters doesn’t state that they did the Thriller dance in the middle of a crowded mall, but since the image amuses me so much I’m going to pretend that they did.

I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse, and I Liked It

I completed a scholarship application a couple weeks ago that asked for a response to the question, “If you had one ‘do-over’ in life, what would you do with it and why?”  And because I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything I wanted to do over, I answered with some BS about not having regrets in life because every experience you’ve had makes you who you are, and to take one away would be to take away a piece of yourself.  (I suppose that wasn’t entirely BS…I do actually feel that way most of the time.)

But it did get me thinking about the types of things that other people might regret, and exactly how far they would go to change them.  How much will power do you actually need to just leave your past behind you?  Is it possible?  What if it took the destruction of the world as you know it to really allow you to escape the things you regret…the ultimate do over?

Things We’ll Miss When the Apocalypse Comes: College Football

I’m not a sports fan by any means. I’ll watch football sometimes, and gymnastics and swimming when the Olympics are on, and in true Southern American fashion, I do love me some NASCAR. I was forced to watch the World Cup this summer and actually learned a few things, despite my best efforts not to. But in general, I avoid sports; I’m horrible at playing them and bored by watching them on TV.

When it comes time for college football, however, you would think aliens had swapped me out with a clone who doesn’t think “Tight End” is a funny name for a football player.  I’m in the stands chanting F-L-O-R-I-D-A S-T-A-T-E until I can’t speak anymore, pulling muscles in my shoulder doing the Seminole Chop over and over and over, and if it’s an away game I’m glued to the TV, yelling obscenities at the opposing players in the stands (this is usually after I’ve had a few; you need a little motivation when your players are the size of Barbie dolls action figures on the screen).

But I suppose it’s not really the football I would miss when no one’s playing anymore because they’ve all turned into zombies.  It’s the spirit

Apocalypse Got You Down? Try Some Retail Therapy!

(This is a continuation of my post about consumer zombies, but I suppose it can be read as a standalone piece if you’re feeling ambitious.)

Unless you’ve been living under a giant polar ice cap for the majority of your life that has only recently started melting, then you’ve visited a shopping mall at some point.  America’s obsession with material things began, in some ways, with the advent of the mall around the 1920s, though it certainly existed before then.  The earliest building resembling the indoor malls that we have today was the Lake View Store in Duluth, Minnesota, built in 1915.  The rise of shopping malls coincided with the rise of suburban communities after World War II, particularly in the United States but also in most of the Western World.  The idea hasn’t changed much since then: all the action takes place indoors, and bigger stores (think Macy’s and Sear’s) act as “anchors” to draw business in for the smaller chain stores.

So it should come as no surprise that shopping malls are irrevocably tied to our consumer culture, and if you’ve been paying attention you’ll know that consumer culture = zombies.  And there’s no better example of how the combination of the three can get the world into a whole lot of trouble than George Romero’s 1978 film Dawn of the Dead.

King Tut was Totally a Master Zombie Killer

In the greatest (and possibly only) example of archaeologists being completely awesome, Renée Friedman of the Archaeological Institute of America posted a response back in 2007 to “The Zombie Survival Guide” author Max Brooks’ assertion that a zombie outbreak once occurred in Ancient Egypt.

In his book, Brooks describes a dig that took place in 1892 which revealed a tomb containing a partially decomposed body infected with Solanum, Brooks’ version of the ubiquitous zombie-creating super virus.  In her response, Friedman goes into great detail about what has actually been uncovered at the dig site, and even deigns to theorize about the possibility that Brooks wasn’t completely making this stuff up by providing “evidence” for the alleged outbreak.

It’s a great article, and the folks at the Institute even gained an interview with Max Brooks, where he describes in detail how archaeology can aid in filling in the gaps of zombie outbreak history.  Both the article and the interview are complete satire of course, but I would love to see the reaction from someone who didn’t realize this; in fact, I’m surprised Hollywood hasn’t cashed in on this yet.  Can you imagine?  “King Tut: Master Zombie Killer,” coming to a theater near you (directed by Michael Bay).

Oh, and my favorite quote from the interview: “One recent expedition to Iraq believes that they have uncovered a cuneiform tablet inscribed with the Sumerian word for ‘zombie.’ Though others have translated it as ‘turnip.'”

“You Gormless Tosser!” Zombie Game Review: Killing Floor

Wake up you pillock!

Strictly speaking, the waves upon waves of zombies that you’re shooting at in Tripwire Interactive’s Killing Floor are actually “specimens.”  They’re the results of the typical experimentation gone wrong: Horzine Biotech, a London-based company, has been cloning humans and manipulating their genes, turning them into super-powered mutant zombies.  And one day, a lab tech must have forgotten to lock the door or something, and the whole lot of them poured out into the streets and began munching on everyone they could see. 

ZOMG, I Just LOVE Your New Shotgun, Where’d You Get It?

I like to think I’m pretty responsible when it comes to money. Sure, there are lots of things I’d like to buy; in fact I’m keeping an eye on eBay while writing this because I’m trying to score an iPod Touch for under $100. Do I really need it? No. I already have an iPod; it’s a few years old, doesn’t hold a charge like it used to, and has a defective headphone jack, but it still works. And I have a laptop, so not only do I have a perfectly good way to access the internet, I can always listen to music on here too (Pandora rocks).

But it would just be so convenient. There’s free Wi-Fi all over campus and around it, so I could use it almost everywhere, and I’m getting a job this semester so I’ll totally earn my money back. And I just love the way it looks, and the touch screen is so cool, and there’s sooooo many apps that I want to buy, and…

I think I may have been brainwashed.

Puffer Fish Revisited

(This is a follow-up to my post about the origin of zombies. So go read that one first. :D)

It was brought to my attention (by the same roommate who talked me out of  “Zombastic;” sometimes I feel like it’s not worth it to have such a smart guy around, even if he’s totally awesome) that there was too much history and not enough “me” in my last post.  Yeah, there was a lot of zombie history in there.  There had to be, because in order to know what something is, you have to know how it came to be in the first place.  But I suppose, on this one occasion, he might be right.  So instead of the fun-filled article of zombie goodness that I was going to summarize for you tonight, you’re getting me.