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Posted By John Sears on January 22, 2011
Sigh. Sorry gang, but I’ve had a computer mishap here and lost a bunch of work, so I’m probably taking the rest of the weekend off from much work here on the site to take some precautions so that this never happens again. I truly hate when minor real life issues get in the way of working for The Cause.
Hopefully things will get back to normal by Monday.
Posted By John Sears on January 22, 2011
A wave of vandalism with Anti-Zombie themes has struck in Hampton, Virginia recently:
HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) – Zombie signs just can’t be killed. Road signs were changed to warn of the undead for the third time in as many days Thursday.
The prankster hit along Fox Hill Road in Hampton sometime overnight. Authorities had turned the sign off and away from the road the day before, but that apparently didn’t keep the culprit away.
In each case the electronic sign read “Caution: Zombies Ahead.”
Two signs have warned of zombies – one across from Barron Elementary and the other near Benjamin Syms Middle School.
The signs were supposed to warn drivers about pipeline construction in the area.
Some might see this as nothing more than a harmless prank, but I ask you, if that was the case, why are they placing their fearmongering so close to the local schools? If a graffiti artist was tagging the walls around a local school with anti-semitic slogans and artwork, it would be seen, rightly, as an attempt to sow discord and spread hate and fear amongst the next generation; why is this any different?
Imagine what it must be like for any Zombie schoolchildren in the district to see, day after day, signs purporting to be official messages from their government warning that Zombies are nearby, and that thusly caution should be exercised. “Are they talking about *me*?” said Zombie child might ask themselves.
Well, pranksters? ARE you talking about them?
These are some pretty committed individuals too:
It appears the vandals broke that lock, then cracked the password and changed the message, according to Hampton Roads Sanitation Department spokeswoman Nancy Munnikhysen.
The contractor told HRSD this is the first time something like this has happened to him.
Even if this contractor is setting the password to something stupid and easy to guess, like A123 or 0000, you’re still talking about breaking locks and standing by the side of the road for a considerable length of time, when anyone might see you. That dedication makes it seem less like hijinks and more like organized hate to me.
Posted By John Sears on January 21, 2011
Did you know that an Anti-Zombie, vaguely musical (think Guitar Hero) videogame came out late last year?
Nope, me either. Or, it seems, anyone who plays games, almost anywhere in the world; but it happened, and it was/is called ‘Rock of the Dead’
Released for the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 in October with a barely-noticed ‘thud’, ‘Rock of the Dead’ wants to be ‘Typing of the Dead’, which wasn’t itself a smashing commercial success. However, with the sort of bitter hilarity that warms my blackened heart, they failed to reach even that humble threshold, and produced what seems to be the worst musically themed game ever made that didn’t feature Aerosmith.
Instead, this turkey featured Rob Zombie. Well, at least some of his music.
From the reviews I can find around the net, this game is pretty awful. From the video I’ve watched I can attest to the lousy graphics, questionable design and fairly painful voice acting (which features Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day, presumably in an attempt to burn some bridges with the Dr. Horrible fanset).
The plot seems to be that meteors fall out of the sky and reanimate various people and creatures as Zombies, and so the main character the Dude has to go out and fight them with the power of his Axe. Riiiiiiiight.
And yet it hasn’t hit true bargain bin territory on Amazon yet. If I can snag a copy on ebay for five bucks I might come back with an official review for you later.
For now I’m left with a number of questions. Why can’t Zombies like Rock and Roll? Why does Neil Patrick Harris want me to hate him? What does Felicia Day have against the Differently Animated?
I guess some things we will never know. Once again the ZRC is tasked with the sad news of telling you, the Zombie Allied public, of another pathetic attempt to cash in on Anti-Zombie violence. Fortunately, this one at least didn’t pay off.
I’m including below a truly hilarious and scathing review from 5min Media, which shows you just what you’re dealing with when considering purchasing, playing, or even looking vaguely in the direction of ‘Rock of the Dead’.
Posted By John Sears on January 21, 2011
Seriously, people. Enough.
I get it, I really do. You watch TV, go to the movies, browse Barnes and Noble and you think, ‘Zombies are EVERYWHERE these days! I should cash in!”
Please don’t. Don’t just toss Zombies, particularly Zombie stereotypes, into your work, thinking that you can cover intellectual and creative bankruptcy with a trendy reference to the zeitgeist.
You might think it’s ‘cool’ or that it will appeal to ‘the kids’. It isn’t, and it won’t, unless said kids have been huffing too much glue.
You might even believe it makes you look like you’re a cutting edge thinker and your hastily Zombified book/play/comic/movie/snack food will vault you into stardom and respectability.
It won’t do either of those things. You know what your ‘work’ will look like to everyone else?
It’ll look something like this:
In an all-new harder edged series and new format featuring legendary writer Gerry Conway! Frank and Joe go undercover as the Living Dead to infiltrate a “Zombie Crawl” that has acquired a notorious reputation for potentially deadly accidents. Will the Undercover Brothers and Agents of A.T.A.C. become the next victims? As if this weren’t enough – there’s something dark and sinister happening while everyone’s distracted by zombie madness! Could this be linked to the eerie events also occurring in River Heights, home of Nancy Drew?
Yes folks, it’s all-new, ‘harder edged’ Hardy Boys with Zombies. Well, maybe; Zombie Walkers, anyway. The Hardy Boys, going undercover in greenface.
Apparently it might be linked to new ‘eerie’ events with Nancy Drew, which involve vampires, I guess.
Uggh.
Feel that? That sickening nausea, that taste of bile at the back of your throat? Yeah. That’s what everyone else will get looking at your new, hastily slapped together ‘Zombie’ book.
Bonus condemnation to the knuckleheads at Papercutz for pioneering what may be the single stupidest form of advertising yet devised by man: Youtube commercials for BOOKS.
Here’s the one for the Hardy Boys ‘Crawling with Zombies’ graphic ‘novel’*:
and here’s Nancy Drew slumming it with a not-quite-sparkly vampire**, or something:
There, do you see? That’s why not to put Zombies in absolutely everything just because The Walking Dead broke ratings records for AMC:
You’ll look like a tool.
This has been a public service announcement from your friends at The Zombie Rights Campaign.
*at 64 pages, it’s a bit of a stretch to call it a novel of any sort
**This is not clever at all, and whoever thought it was needs professional help, editorial, psychiatric, I don’t care which:
Vampire-mania has gripped River Heights, with teenage girls going wild over the new “DieLite” novels and movies. But what happens when a supposedly “real” handsome young vampire arrives on the scene? Will Nancy expose him as a fraud — or fall under his dark spell? As if that wasn’t enough– there’s something dark and sinister happening while everyone’s distracted by the vampire madness. Could this possibly be linked to what’s happening in Bayport, home of the Hardy Boys? Spoiler warning: there are no vampires, blood or gore in this graphic novel.
DieLite? Seriously? If satire isn’t dead, contra Tom Lehrer, it’s at the very least in a deep, deep coma, shamed into avoiding reality by the atrocities done in its name.
Posted By John Sears on January 20, 2011
Ever wonder what The Postman would be like with less David Brin (or Kevin Costner) and more Zombies (i.e., any)?
Well, wonder no longer, because “The Last Mailman: Neither Rain, Nor Sleet, Nor Zombies” by Kevin Burke mixes post-apocalyptic mail service with Zombie scaremongering:
Four-year degree in business.
Trained in hand-to-hand combat.
Works well with zombies.
This is the resume of the last mailman on Earth. It is the near future, and the modern world we knew has been overrun and destroyed by reanimated corpses who hunt humans for food. Mankind has retreated to small pockets of civilization and practically surrendered to these walking dead. But one man routinely leaves behind the safety and comfort of his home in this new world in order to find the people and things we’ve long abandoned. He battles the elements. He battles his own brewing insanity. But mostly, he battles zombies.
This is his story.
Insanity? I’ll say. As the Post Office has had to learn in recent years, when massive demographic shifts disturb a long-held business model, the answer isn’t to stubbornly cling to outmoded ideas (like, say, 1st class letters) but rather to find new ways to be useful (flat rate shipping for e-commerce, for example).
Yet here we have a postman, supposedly the very last, who stubbornly insists on serving only the dwindling percentage of the population that is technically ‘alive’.
I’d wager the Undead Parcel Service is whipping his butt.
More broadly, this brings to mind a larger topic here at the ZRC: the way that Zombies are associated with the ‘Last’ of things, usually by causing an apocalypse, rather than the ‘First’ of other things. This pessimistic framing is rampant in Anti-Zombie media products and fiction, you see it everywhere.
Some handy examples:
“Last Blood“, a once mega-popular webcomic, which as the title hints is fixated on the dwindling supply of blood for Vampires.
“The Last Man on Earth” and “The Omega Man” – Vincent Price and later Charlton Heston focus the attention on the few remaining Living people to the obvious detriment of the quasi-Zombies (vampires in Matheson’s original).
(I’m not putting ‘I Am Legend’ in here because the original story’s not about Zombies and the movie… well, the less said the better, for everyone really)
“Last Night on Earth” – popular Anti-Zombie board game
“The Last Christmas” – new apparently Anti-Zombie fiction by Brian Posehn
You get the idea. In all these cases, even given the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’, the authors and creative minds decide to look at the glass as distinctly half-empty instead of half-full (of Zombie goodness).
I chalk that up to prejudice. Ugly, ugly prejudice. It’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you want to be the Last Mailman, don’t cater to the postal needs of an emerging Zombie population. If you want it to be the Last Christmas, be that jerk who won’t give presents to Zombies. Last Man on Earth? Well sure, if you don’t want to acknowledge your fellow man just because he’s a bit photophobic and shuffly. Last Blood? Well actually, that one’s all the Vampires’ fault, if you read the comic.
Poor planning. Tsk tsk, vampires.
The ZRC would like to see a greater emphasis on the positive and INNOVATIVE aspects of Zombification. ‘Dead Eyes Open‘ does a great job on this score, looking at the impacts on entertainment, videogames, social life, population distribution and politics. Why can’t more authors be so forward thinking?
We’ll keep a look out and let you know when we find more, naturally.
(The Last Mailman is available from Amazon for the Kindle here)
Posted By John Sears on January 20, 2011
News of a new, ‘pixel-based’ flash game where you, guess what, slaughter Zombies in a quasi-dual-stick shooter, came to the ZRC via BuyZombie recently:
Bitejacker Released Today
We had a chance to show off the BiteJacker Trailer a little while ago and this pixel based zombie game is coming out… well.. TODAY! So if you are interested check out the Official Bitejacker Website!
I decided to check it out so I went to the developer’s site and gave it a quick spin this afternoon.
I’m honestly not sure what to say. I mean, yes, it is a rabidly Anti-Zombie game that easily earns at least a formal Anti-Zombie rating from the ZRC. It also seems to be psychotically hard, but that may be due to trying to play it on a laptop; I could go digging around for a mouse to set up the preferred control arrangement, but… eh. (Part of this is probably due to the fact that you use the mouse for pinpointing your shots, which is hard on a trackpad, so as I said, quasi-dual stick)
To be honest, I’ve played so many of these dual stick(ish) games, against so many virtual Zombies (who really only want a hug and some understanding, most likely), that the appeal in putting in a few hours to thoroughly document the depravity in this one is limited for me. Plus, as said before, it wears the Anti-Zombie hate on its pixellated sleeves, so it can be safely condemned for The Cause with only a couple quick sessions.
In terms of gameplay or ‘fun’ that a person might have mowing down sprite-based-Zombies, I hesitate to rate it, but as a statement on Living-Differently Animated relations it’s an affront to all that is good and decent. For shame, developers at Secret Base, for shame.
Posted By John Sears on January 20, 2011
Just a quick update to mention something I covered on the ZRC Twitter feed: the launch titles have been announced for Nintendo’s new 3D gaming portable, and a Resident Evil made the cut:
The following games are set to be release on launch day or in the weeks thereafter:
Pilotwings Resort
Nintendogs + Cats
Steel Diver
Dead or Alive Dimensions
Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D
Madden NFL Football
Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D
Asphalt 3D
Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D
Ridge Racer 3D
LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars
This isn’t the 3D Resident Evil we covered earlier here at the ZRC; the launch title is Resident Evil: The Mercenaries, and the previously mentioned one is Resident Evil: Revelations.
What’s the deal? Well, Mercs is a 3DS port and improvement of the “Mercenaries” mode found in previous Resident Evil games, which take the core gameplay of Resident Evil (sadistic Anti-Zombie violence) and turn it into campy splatter-fun for hardcore gamers who don’t have a very enlightened view of Zombies.
Joystiq offers an explanation:
Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D isn’t a game — it’s fan service. You see, there are two types of Resident Evil fans: casual ones that have fun playing a “survival horror” game and the hardcore buffs that really, really dig its absurd, kitschy, over-the-top action.
…
There’s a reason why the original “The Mercenaries” game mode was tucked away as a bonus in the last two console RE offerings. Where are the puzzles? Scripted events? Where is the story? These are all features that have been severed, packaged into Resident Evil: Revelations (another 3DS game, due at a later date).
While some will rightfully take offense at Capcom’s obvious “double dipping,” it’s hard to deny the sheer fun of knifing “zombies” in the knees and spin-kicking them to increase your score multiplier. The Mercenaries is meant for those gamers that find the core gameplay of Resident Evil fun and want to memorize maps in order to get the highest score.
In other words, this isn’t just an Anti-Zombie game; this is an Anti-Zombie game par excellence, one that plumbs the depths of casual cruelty for the ‘lulz’, not unlike Dead Rising and its ‘hilarious’ prop-based savagery.
According to Joystiq it’s also a graphical powerhouse, pushing the boundaries of what a portable console can do and serving as a technological showpiece for the new (and rather pricey) hardware. Thus we can expect to see a lot of it in the news, showcased in stores and exhibited to potential buyers of the 3DS as a de facto flagship title.
Which is of course just what the world needs, another super-high-profile Anti-Zombie game from Capcom, and another attempt to milk every last dollar out of the Zombie-hating denizens of the gaming community with not one but two early 3D Resident Evil games.
Good grief.
Posted By John Sears on January 19, 2011
The Zombie Rights Campaign is a nonpartisan advocacy organization, but we’re not afraid to call out political figures when they do wrong by the Differently Animated, and so today we’re putting Republicans in Wisconsin on notice: stop your scheme to make it harder for Zombies to vote!
Oh, sure, liberal commenters see this as an attack on poor and urban voters, who traditionally lean (heavily) Democratic, but I think they’re missing the larger issue:
Immediately after taking power in Wisconsin, the Republican party has launched an effort to make it harder for people to vote, especially low income individuals who are the least likely to have drivers licenses. They are pushing for both a law and an amendment to the state Constitution to require a photo ID to vote.
…
The official reason for these changes would be to stop “voter fraud”, which is acually extremely rare. It is impossible not to conclude that the real goal for the Republicans is to unnecessarily make it much harder for traditionally Democratic-leaning groups like young, urban, and low income individuals to exercise their constitutional right to vote. These groups are the least likely to have up-to-date local drivers licenses.
Mr. Walker is right – voter fraud is so rare it’s completely irrelevant to American politics. No election has been stolen with actual voter fraud in many decades; it just doesn’t happen. It’s too hard to coordinate, too easy to uncover, in our more connected age. In the old days, sure, both parties would stoop so far as to preprint ballots, bus voters from polling place to polling place so they could vote many times over, and other nefarious tactics. In fact, it used to be legal to outright bribe voters with things like liquor. Times have changed though, and voter fraud, that is to say actual people casting actual fake or excess ballots, it’s just not a factor in modern American politics. You’ll get a handful of stray votes in a major contest, mostly from people who didn’t know they were ineligible to vote.
The New York Times talked about this back in 2007:
WASHINGTON, April 11 — Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews.
Although Republican activists have repeatedly said fraud is so widespread that it has corrupted the political process and, possibly, cost the party election victories, about 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted as of last year.
Most of those charged have been Democrats, voting records show. Many of those charged by the Justice Department appear to have mistakenly filled out registration forms or misunderstood eligibility rules, a review of court records and interviews with prosecutors and defense lawyers show.
120 cases, nationwide, most of them stemming from honest mistakes. That’s not even in one year, that’s from 2002 through 2006. In other words, there are about 24 cases a year of actual, indicted voter fraud in the United States.
Contrast that with the regular and incredibly large number of votes that are thrown out each national election in the United States:
In Ohio, during the 2004 Presidential election, 153,237 ballots were simply thrown away — more than the Bush “victory” margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was five times the Bush alleged victory margin of 5,988. In Iowa, Bush’s triumph of 13,498 was overwhelmed by 36,811 votes rejected. The official number is bad enough — 1,855,827 ballots cast not counted, according to the federal government’s Elections Assistance Commission. But the feds are missing data from several cities and entire states too embarrassed to report the votes they failed to count.
Correcting for that under-reporting, the number of ballots cast but never counted goes to 3,600,380. Why doesn’t your government tell you this?
Hey, they do. It’s right there in black and white in a U.S. Census Bureau announcement released seven months after the election — in a footnote. The Census tabulation of voters voting in the 2004 presidential race “differs,” it reads, from ballots tallied by the Clerk of the House of Representatives by 3.4 million votes.
So what’s the story here? Why are Republicans focused so intently on voter fraud, which the evidence shows doesn’t really exist, and nobody cares about millions of actual votes thrown in the garbage?
Well, it has to do with demographics. As Greg Palast outlines in his piece ‘A Recipe for a Cooked Election’, quoted immediately above, these tossed votes are overwhelmingly more likely to occur in minority precincts, which vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
Why don’t Democrats care? Well, in part, Democrats suck at political messaging, but in part it’s because the people who make the ‘faulty’ machines do things like this:
New Mexico’s Secretary of State, Rebecca Vigil-Giron, seemed curiously uncurious about Hispanic and Native precincts where nearly one in ten voters couldn’t be bothered to choose a president.
Vigil-Giron, along with Governor Bill Richardson, not only stopped any attempt at a recount directly following the election, but demanded that all the machines be wiped clean. This not only concealed evidence of potential fraud but destroyed it. In 2006, New Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled the Secretary of State’s machine-cleaning job illegal — too late to change the outcome of the election, of course.
…
Vigil-Giron, after putting a stop to the recount, rather than schlep out to investigate the missing vote among the iguanas and Navajos, left the state to officiate at a dinner meeting in Minneapolis for her national association. It was held on a dinner boat. The tab for the moonlight ride was picked up by touch-screen voting machine maker ES&S Corporation. Breakfast, in case you’re curious, was served by touchscreen maker Diebold Corp.
Nice work if you can get it, huh?
In the United States, in a major election year, millions of votes are thrown away, and, assuming we only catch 1% of voter fraudsters, perhaps 2400 fake votes are cast, most of those by accident. The votes miscast and the votes thrown out both tend to be Democratic ones, and the effect of persecuting honest mistakes is similar to that of tossing out votes: it tends to disenfranchise or scare off Democratic voters.
Which brings us back to Wisconsin. The GOP just took over state government here, and they have a tenuous grasp on it to say the least. Governor Scott Walker’s disastrous game of chicken with the Obama administration over high-speed rail money turned out badly, and the state lost about 800 million dollars in federal money to build a high speed rail line that we need quite badly; for whatever reason, Amtrak never came to the state capital here in Madison. Ooops.
During the election, Walker lied and bamboozled voters, claiming he could call Obama’s bluff and get to use that money to repave our roads instead, saving the state the cost of doing so. He was wrong, he lost, and now thousands of people who would have had jobs building the railroad get to watch that money go to Illinois and other states.
Walker, by the way, ran on creating jobs.
Thus you can see why they’re a bit worried about the next election, and might want to throw out Democratic votes to make it a bit easier for Republicans to stay in office. Their plan, however, impacts Zombie voters as well, which makes it not just unjust but a subset of the ZRC’s Sacred Cause:
Madison — Republicans plan a two-pronged approach to require voters to show photo identification at the polls, with the quick passage of a bill followed by an attempt to amend the Wisconsin Constitution that would make it difficult to undo the ID requirement.
…
Republicans who control the Legislature argue that requiring photo ID at the polls is a common-sense way to stop voter fraud. Democrats say there is no evidence of widespread fraud and such a measure will make it harder for some people to vote.“What this bill is going to do is make it harder for legitimate voters to vote,” said Rep. Joe Parisi (D-Madison).
Parisi, who ran elections when he was Dane County clerk, said the changes would make the jobs of poll workers more difficult. He argued that a photo ID requirement would encounter constitutional challenges because large numbers of African-Americans in Milwaukee do not have driver’s licenses.
…
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), an avid supporter of the photo ID requirement, said lawmakers are debating whether to move rapidly on photo ID or wait to develop a larger elections package that could include eliminating election-day registration.
Wisconsin is one of nine states that allow voters to register at the polls, which observers credit with boosting voter turnout.
Momentum is building among Republicans to eliminate the practice. Leibham said he supports getting rid of it, and Stone said he is open to the idea.
“Voting’s a right, but there’s also a responsibility to voting,” Leibham said.
It’s fairly obvious how this impacts the poor, or voters without driver’s licenses, or voters who move a lot (like college kids). Yes, you can get a free ID card; if you’re willing to wait in line for hours at the DMV, then wait who knows how long to get it printed, who knows how long in advance. This tends to hit poor voters harder, and urban voters, many of whom don’t have cars, harder still. For car-owning rural and suburban voters, there is of course virtually no impact at all.
The same-day registration thing is even more nefarious, because registering can be cumbersome, especially if you move frequently, like college students do, for example, or if you simply don’t get interested in the election until late in the cycle, which is your right. Wisconsin lets you register at the polls themselves, which boosts turnout and makes things easier on everyone. It also makes it easier for Democratic voters to cast ballots, which is why the state Republicans want it gone.
It’s fairly easy to see how provisions that benefit poor, urban or young voters also benefit Zombies. Let’s say you die two weeks before election day. You revive after a few days or a week, and you’ve got a problem now; your address, your ID cards, your registration? They’re all invalid! It’s hard enough to get anyone to give a new Zombie the time of day, can you imagine explaining to a voter registration bureaucrat that you need to get re-registered in a hurry because you’re really eager to cast a ballot for Governor?
That is, assuming they even ALLOW you to register, being a Zombie and all. Many officials would simply turn you away. Or whip out a shotgun and go Woody Harrelson on you.
Whereas, if you can vote without The Man’s approved ID, with easy, quick registration at the polls (where the workers tend to be very understanding and strike me as Zombie Friendly types)? The Zombie vote stands a far better chance at getting through.
The Zombie Rights Campaign is therefore calling on Wisconsin Republicans to own up to their failure to convince the electorate that, say, devastating our economy and throwing thousands of out of work is a good plan, and instead of disenfranchising the Differently Animated, DO something, anything, to try and win back the voters who you now seem convinced will spurn you in the upcoming election cycles.
It just wouldn’t be an election without Zombie voters; just ask Chicago, home of the Horror Society and longtime Zombie Voter bastion.
Hopefully this plan will fail and things won’t get any harder for the stalwart and civic-minded Differently Animated community here in Wisconsin.
Posted By John Sears on January 19, 2011
I suppose after Diary of the Dead tried to marry digital cinematography with the Zombie Apocalypse this was only a matter of time::
One woman’s story as she blogs – and fights back – the zombie apocalypse
Allison Hewitt and her five colleagues at the Brooks and Peabody Bookstore are trapped together when the zombie outbreak hits. Allison reaches out for help through her blog, writing on her laptop and utilizing the military’s emergency wireless network (SNET). It may also be her only chance to reach her mother. But as the reality of their situation sinks in, Allison’s blog becomes a harrowing account of her edge-of-the-seat adventures (with some witty sarcasm thrown in) as she and her companions fight their way through ravenous zombies and sometimes even more dangerous humans.
See, this is precisely the sort of thing that causes the public to lose confidence in our Military-Industrial Complex’s ability to handle a major disaster. Apparently, rather than dealing with carnage in the streets and complete lawlessness, the military decides to spend their time, effort and manpower setting up wifi. During the ‘apocalypse’.
I mean, what’s next, setting up a water theme park in a war zone riddled with explosions and gunbattles in the stree– oh wait, they actually did that, in Iraq.
Hmm. Ok, that’s one point to you, Madeleine Roux, author of this particular tome of Anti-Zombie lore, in terms of plausibility.
On the larger question of how the Undead should be treated, though, I think we’ve still got the high ground.
The book is available at Amazon, though the reviews are middling at best:
Plot gaps diminish this otherwise exciting horror adventure debut. When the zombie apocalypse breaks out, bookstore clerk Allison escapes the titular trap and finds a group of survivors at a community center, including handsome astronomy professor Collin. Complications–aside from the usual attacks by ravenous undead–include religious zealots, paramilitary survivalists, and Collin’s estranged and intimidating wife. As Allison blogs about her experience on SNet, an emergency military network, commenters provide some sense of the disaster’s scope, but there’s little explanation for how she created the blog and why no other sites are mentioned. Likewise, a pivotal early attack by a zombified squirrel is ignored later as the heroes traipse through the woods ignoring all nonhumanoid threats. These flaws aren’t enough to hide Roux’s obvious talent for witty characters and gory action sequences, but they will frustrate attentive readers.
Zombie squirrel attacks?
Honestly? But squirrels are adorable, if thieving, vermin. Zombie squirrels are probably even more cuddly. Just feed them some walnuts already.
I’m terribly amused by the idea that you would *blog* in this scenario, however. Moreover, that you’d get a lot of commentors. I mean, how would that go?
Hypothetical Scenario Follows:
http://www.Bookworm_Ally.snet.mil.gov/blog
Title: “Gee, We Could Use Some Help Here”
Body: Still trapped in a bookstore, surrounded by George Romero’s actors on strike or something. Could we get some law and order plz?
Comments (3)
From: MilCommander
–We’re too busy setting up these access points 2 help u, s0rry.
10:58 am
From: Bookworm Ally
–THEY ARE EATING MEEEeeee
11:35 am
From: MilCommander
–Lulz
2:03 pm
End Hypothetical Scenario
I think I can rest my case. Just be glad if, when you’re blogging the Zombie Apocalypse, you aren’t drowned in comments from lonely, introverted, and really quite sad Mega64 fans.
Bonus Missed Opportunity: How could Roux not name this book ‘Blogging of the Dead’? I’m TOTALLY calling that title here and now, people. It’s mine until someone presents some prior art.
(thanks again to BuyZombie for pointing this one out)
Posted By John Sears on January 19, 2011
There are a lot of defense/dual stick arcade shooters out these days; we’ve reviewed several here for the ZRC, like ‘Zombie Apocalypse‘, Yet Another Zombie Defense (aptly named), or the infamous ‘I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1NIT!!!!1′.
In a crowded field, how do you compete? Well, we’d suggest not entering such a scrum of violence against the virtual Differently Animated to start with, here at the ZRC. To the developers at Team ZPZ, a different thought apparently occurred:
“What if we make the Zombies *Zoo Animals*?”
Yes, it’s an Anti-Zombie dual stick shooter where you gun down Zombie Rhinos and other Zoo creatures, who are surely highly endangered specimens, considering the relative rarity of, say, Living rhinos to start with.
How conservation minded! What bunch of greenies they must be at Team ZPZ.
How tragic too, because honestly the Zombie Zoo animals they’ve come up with are pretty adorable, and I’m sure they just want to be your friends, if you could put down the gun and be reasonable for a minute.
Instead of course, you get wave after wave of violence, like the following:
Shocking. That particular zoo must have had the largest rhino breeding program on Earth.
Apparently the game will be out soon, on February 4th, if you need to evaluate this newest entry in the crowded and very antisocial subgenre yourself.
A bit more information is available here; thanks go out to the folks at BuyZombie for bringing this to our attention as well.