Posted By John Sears on June 19, 2010

Well, we here at the ZRC have been very pleased this week. The auction preparations are going great, donations are coming in left and right, and we seem to have entered into a productive dialogue with Ask Dr. Eldritch vis a vis Zombie Rights and negative stereotypes regarding Zombie odors.

Don’t worry, Mr. Nichols. Your comic, and demonstrated committment to increased sensitivity for the Differently Animated, Metabolically Challenged, whatever term you prefer, is still well-received overall at ZRC Headquarters.

Some of your merchandise, however… ahem.

Blasting Zombies.. with a shotgun? Really?

Simple joys indeed. We’re just going to set these shirts aside and assume that they date from a somewhat less enlightened period of Ask Dr. Eldritch.

(Just as an aside, why do horror movies/books/comics utilize shotguns so heavily against Zombies? Shotguns rely mostly on soft-tissue damage for their kills, which makes them uniquely *un*suited for fighting most hypothetical Differently Animated individuals. The fiendish Max Brooks famously advises Living Supremacists to eschew guns altogether, in favor of bladed weapons.)

One question is helping to keep me up at night, however.

Why Tab?

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Comics

Posted By John Sears on June 16, 2010

As Mel Brooks said, it’s all about the merchandizing.

Ok, he said it more like ‘moichandizing’, but you get the idea. We here at the ZRC are thrilled with the results of our advocacy and the ongoing Lurch for the Cure campaign and have decided to stage a big event in the so-called real world, taking pro-Zombie activism into the veritable heart of darkness: a horror convention.

As observant readers of our frontpage may have noted, the ZRC has a booth at the Famous Monsters of Filmland Convention in Indianapolis, IN on July 9th-11th. We’ll have our usual assortment of goods, both benefitting the ZRC and the Lynn Sage Cancer Research Foundation through Lurch for the Cure, but we started asking ourselves: is this enough? Or could we possibly take on more hilariously-unprofitable work on behalf of the Differently Animated?

Of course we can! Thus I am very happy to announce the First Annual Lurch for the Cure Silent Auction. Simply come by our booth in the convention hall at Famous Monsters on Saturday, July 10th, and you can bid on the best assortment of Zombie-related goods we could beg and grovel for, from independent artists and filmmakers across the country. We’re still soliciting donations and a full listing of our benefactors will go up shortly, along with tantalizing information on their contributions, but for now we have to hold you in suspense.

For this one event we at the ZRC are even willing to let bygones be bygones and take generous donations from less than Zombie-Correct individuals, people who might wish to improve their public image and undo some of the harm their work has inflicted on the Differently Animated community. If you are such a person, who has profited from the negative portrayal of Zombies in the past, and wish to make amends, this is an excellent opportunity to do so.

Absolutely 100% of all money collected in the auction goes to the Lynn Sage Cancer Research Foundation. We already had the booth and various convention expenses covered, so you don’t have to worry about subsidizing our slow descent into insolvency with your auction moneys. Spend freely! Spend wantonly! Give us your money!

(It will probably feel good to count it. Ideally we’ll get so many fine items to sell off, and so many well-off suckers, err, patrons, that there will be a Scrooge McDuck worthy pile at the end of the event and we can roll around on it joyously, if briefly)

Once again I have to say, this opportunity for outreach would not be possible without the kindness and generosity of the horror community, many of whom on any other day would be facing a ZRC picket line. On July 10th, however, if we can help out a great cause while generating a bit of good will for our Undead Brethren, why, that’ll be fine by us. We can have a ceasefire for one day.

Hope to see you (and your sweet delicious cash) there, Zombie Fans.

(If you have a Zombie-related item you would like to donate, please contact the ZRC via email at zrc-atsymbol-jsears.xidus.net and we will get you all set up, plus probably gush about how awesome you are for helping. Even if your name is George Romero.)

Category: Lurch for the Cure | No Comments »
Tags: Public Appearance, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on June 12, 2010

So the ZRC gave a recommendation in our Media Resources documentation to Ask Dr. Eldritch, due primarily to the secondary storyline which deals with a group of Zombies trying to make a living in a typical white-collar workplace, dealing with all your normal white-collar issues – saving up vacation, dealing with unreasonable deadlines, having a jerk for a boss, what have you. In addition the series also dealt with the unique challenges Zombies face in a Living dominated work environment, the discrimination they struggle valiantly to overcome.

Recently, however, the comic strip has begun to trouble me somewhat. There’s the matter of the long-running ‘Today’s Zombie Danger’ graphic in the upper left on the new comic page, for one. I had long considered this a harmless satire of our color-coded terrorism alerts, so widely mocked during the Bush administration. What if it’s not, however? What if Dr. Eldritch is seriously pushing the idea that Zombies are a dangerous and variable threat to the well-being of the general populace, one that needs to be forecast, like bad weather or Tsunamis?

The most recent comic unfortunately engages in some apparent Z-bashing as well, making cheap shots at the ‘smell’ associated with a wet Zombie and making puns at Zombie-expense, once again perpetuating the myth that Zombies are monosyllabic shambling illiterates, which is one of the most persistent myths that we challenge here at the ZRC.

I think I’ll have to contact the creator and see where his feelings on Zombies truly lie. More on that later.

Update: Well that shows me for being busy organizing the Lurch auction; Ask Dr. Eldritch noticed our concerns and addressed them alongside a new comic featuring the Office Zombies discussing various forms of discrimination against the Differently Animated.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Comics

Posted By John Sears on June 11, 2010

Video below the cut to avoid screwing up our formatting on the main page. I need to get the tech monkey to help find a more permanent fix for this issue.

(more…)

Category: ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Public Appearance, Romero, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on June 10, 2010

I apologize once again most profusely, dear Zombie Rights enthusiasts, but it’s been one of those weeks from hell, at least as regards doing stuff for the ZRC site.

In the process of moving, a computer has died and gone to the technology graveyard, and I somehow put the cables to almost every device in different boxes than the devices themselves. Luckily, I didn’t need that computer (except to run a printer on the network) and I have gotten the devices more or less matched up with their lifelines again.

So: Zombie March pictures. First, to see the whole set you can go here.

Here are a few highlights for the blogging audience though.

Here you can see our technical director in her pink Lurch shirt alongside a couple of our friends from Bloomington, who we met up with in Milennium park on the rainy, gray day of the March. They were most enthusiastic to help out with our activism.

Here we have more Zombie protestors and you can see our (in)famous “George Romero: War Criminal” sign, which we save for special occasions when we’re feeling less conciliatory.

This is the obligatory “Yes they really were on location” shot, with the Art Institute of Chicago in the background. Local color!

In this picture you can see Zombies doing their civic duty to temporarily man a Visitor’s booth at the park.

Finally I’ll leave you all with this image of Zombies marching proudly off into the dwindling twilight, having done a hard day’s work agitating for civil rights for the Differently Animated.

Good job all, Living and Unliving alike.

Category: ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Public Appearance, Romero, Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on June 8, 2010

So we went to the March, and it was a big success.

*But*

I’ve been a bit delayed in processing all the photos and video we took that day because, in combination with the move, I seem to have strained, perhaps even sprained my left ankle. Unpacking from the move we had in progress is a lot harder when you have trouble going up and down stairs, heh.

I’m trying to take it in stride though (no pun intended), and use this as a learning opportunity. Many Zombies are sadly encumbered, when it comes to pedestrian travel, with similarly banged up legs; this in turn leads to the cruel ‘shambling’ stereotype. I can say I’ve walked a bit in a Zombie’s shoes now, thanks to the injury and the limp I’m sporting.

Rest assured ZRC fans, I’m getting on it today. (The uploading to flickr and youtube I mean; I’m still trying to stay off the bad leg when possible)

See what we go through here at the ZRC? How we suffer for Undead Equality?

I thought so.

Category: ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Public Appearance

Posted By John Sears on June 4, 2010

I know we’re late to this particular net party at the ZRC, but in between unpacking boxes we started watching Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series this week.

How does this pertain to Zombies? Well… in the game, Zombies are a major type of Monster card that you can play, “Monster” here having no negative connotation since all of your characters on the field, whether plants, animals, magical people or elemental forces, are all “Monsters”. Some of the best decks that were in play back when we played the game (a few years ago now) were Zombie based. Jenny, the art director, used a Zombie deck in fact (I played with Dragons).

So Yu-Gi-Oh the game is pretty pro-Zombie. In the anime, each character plays a particular way, and Zombie cards are played by a throwaway character in the first season brought to the US, so they don’t get a lot of screentime.

Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged is more or less what it sounds like: a greatly shortened, comedically interpreted form of the series. MST3k meets anime meets Youtube. Very funny. Unfortunately, when it gets to the episode dealing with Zombies, it peddles in some truly outdated Zombie stereotypes, particularly the idea that Zombies, or even people who like Zombies, in this case, are functionally illiterate, brain-obsessed social outcasts, doomed to be trampled upon or used by human malefactors.

See for yourself:

The oddest thing is that the creator of YtAS claims to love Zombies; this is his description of the episode on Youtube:

Zombies make everything better.

Does Citizen Kane have zombies? Well it should.

If you truly love Zombies, Little Kuriboh, you should work harder at integrating them into your work without falling back upon these tired anti-Zombie cliches. We know you have the talent to be funny without them; now the Zombie community needs you to be funny for them as well.

Category: Zombie Media | 1 Comment »
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Posted By John Sears on June 3, 2010

Uggh… arghhh….

Being a living person has its disadvantages. I think muscle pulls and strains are some of the worst.

In short, the move is done, and man was it a lot of work. We have our shiny new internet connection here at the new and improved ZRC World Headquarters, which has room for a proper goods storeroom and perhaps even a guest room for visiting activists and Zombies fleeing those pesky mobs of ignorant torchbearing living-supremacists.

Or do those focus more on Frankenstein’s creations? Hmm. It’s close enough to Undead for us, so if anyone who recently came to life on a slab with a mad scientist raving about obtaining the power of god standing nearby, and is now being pursued by angry yet colorful villagers, and also happens to be in the Madison area, particularly the south side around the PD, look us up! We’ll provide shelter.

Let’s see.. Zombie March this weekend. We’re totally stoked, though I’ve misplaced my camera’s battery and need to find it tomorrow to take pictures and video. At least one of our favorite living people in the world is going to be there, so that’s even better than it already was. I hope the weather holds out – not sure about Chicago, but it was nice and cool here in Wisconsin today.

Well, I’m rambling. Lots of pics and stuff from the march in two short days.

Hooray.

Category: ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Public Appearance

Posted By John Sears on May 27, 2010

Today is the glorious day of the ZRC’s moving. I actually have a bunch of photographs of fascinating objects uncovered as I packed to move, but it’s hard to find the time to post them. I shall endeavour to do so in the spare moments for the next few days.

Please be aware that, due to moving, any orders from the ZRC store might be delayed a day or so. We’ll throw in some free stickers or something as compensation in that event.

I have some VERY big news about the Lurch for the Cure to talk about when I get the chance as well.

Category: Lurch for the Cure, ZRC News | No Comments »
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Posted By John Sears on May 24, 2010

Just a quick bloggy reminder to everyone in the Chicago area, there’s an enormous Zombie March scheduled for June 5th at Millenium Park.

Come out and show your solidarity with the Differently Animated! We’ll be there, doing our usual agitating thing.

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Tags: Public Appearance