Posted By John Sears on May 14, 2010

So, after considerable thought, the ZRC has decided to purchase ‘Survival of the Dead’ on Xbox Live as a digital rental of some sort. The terms are fairly onerous; you have to watch the file within 14 days, once you’ve started watching you only get 24 hours until it’s no longer yours, and for this privilege you pay 12 dollars, plus wait while the 6.5 gig file downloads, of course.

Normally I hate DRM stuff like this, but seen from the perspective of pay-per-view, it’s not so bad, and it is full HD, which you can’t get on a DVD. So… hmm.

It’s a new frontier in theatrical releases of zombie movies, however; before a theatrical release, before a DVD release, pricey, slick and modern. Perhaps if this succeeds it will become the new gold standard to deliver Lifelist prejudice to American audiences. A depressing thought, really.

To be continued.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Public Appearance, Romero

Posted By John Sears on May 14, 2010

So the ZRC has been looking to move its headquarters (and our living space) for some time, and today we think we found the right abode. It includes tons of room to expand our operations, in a sleepy tree-lined residential neighborhood.

It got me to thinking, though. The forms just to apply for renting a house require so many forms of identification, and I’m not sure any of them are accessible for Zombies. It’s an issue that’s brought up, for what it’s worth, in the novel Breathers (which the ZRC had to give a negative review in that the fictional Zombies, while humanized and fully realized individuals, set a terrible example for Human-Zombie coexistance). When you die, society gives you a death certificate and negates your legal existance, your personhood. Which would be fine, obviously, in the event that you do not subsequently rise as a Zombie. A corpse has no need for Mastercard, let alone a driver’s license.

But for the friendly neighborhood Zombie looking to rent the house next door, where could they get ID? Granted, your birth certificate is still on file, but I’m pretty sure they flag them somehow to match the death certificate. Social Security Numbers are apparently retired upon death in an elaborate system which can pose serious problems for a living person accidentally marked as dead; presumably Zombies would face similar difficulties. Given that Social Security numbers can be tied in with many other aspects of one’s life, as the Wikipedia article notes, it is difficult to maintain credit or even file one’s taxes when ‘deceased’. Without valid ID, credit cards or social security numbers, renting a place to stay, or even gaining employment, would prove difficult. Combined with the social stigma Zombies already face, this could render most living spaces out of Zombie reach, severely curtailing the sort of social integration necessary for true progress in Living-Undead relations.

I wonder what steps would be required to get the Social Security Administration to amend their Death files with a new ‘Zombie’ category. Once such a category exists, whether properly marked as ‘dead’ or not, individuals could petition to have their status switched to Zombie and get a new number (since the old one becomes public information upon death). Everybody wins; a safety net is put in place for those incorrectly flagged as dead, and Zombies share in the improved administration of social policy.

Perhaps I should write our Congresswoman.

Category: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Tags: Social Justice

Posted By John Sears on May 11, 2010

Reviews of a bunch of Zombie comics I picked up at the local comic shop over the weekend will be going up soon; Marvel Zombies 5 is out, and there are a couple of new Indie comics about Zombies that will bear paying closer attention to.

Meanwhile, I haven’t commented much on the now-ending DC event, ‘Blackest Night’, which involves various superheroes being brought back from beyond the grave as Undead of a sort, in service to an evil god of Death, or something.

Honestly, I tried reading an issue, and… I can’t say Blackest Night has anything in particular to do with Zombies as we typically think of them. I’m not entirely sure the Blackest Night comics have any bearing on what is traditionally thought of as sequential art, either. They seem more like a Mobius strip of internal references looping back on themselves infinitely while colorful fireworks go off in the foreground. Confusing.

Is the enormous crossover event unfair to Zombies, because it casts these particular Undead in a villainous role? *shrug* Maybe. But it’s certainly not a traditional sort of prejudice. These ‘Black Lanterns’ have superpowers, snazzy spandex, and fly around fighting for the anthropomorphic personification of a colored-coded concept. But so do the very-much-living Red, Green, Blue, Purple, Yellow and Violent lanterns. (Polka-dot lanterns coming soon). So if they’re villains, they’re also victims of Death itself. Or something. Honestly, after the page where Hal Jordan fuses with the godlike entity of fear to fight the incarnation of God’s wrath who has fused with the lesser god of Death Nekron (one of three DC death gods, Wikipedia informs me) while the other Rainbow Coalition Lanterns fight an army of revived Black Lanterns from across decades of comic book storytelling, I gave up. There’s fan-pandering deus ex machina, and then there’s fan-pandering deus ex machina with an entire host of actual Gods. From reading online, apparently the long-running story concludes when a White Lantern is created, by magic, and everything is made right. Via magic. So…

We at the ZRC will stick to dealing with comprehensible, if also reprehensible, anti-Zombie prejudice, and leave Blackest Night where it is.

Category: Zombie Media | No Comments »
Tags: Comics

Posted By John Sears on May 9, 2010

Well, we were going to have a big kickoff with web advertising and everything for Lurch for the Cure on Monday, but then some jerk had to go and steal one of the ZRC’s credit card numbers.

So I think it’ll have to go on hold for a week while we get our delicious moneys back.

Thievery! The outrage of it all.

In the meantime we’ve done some work over on the Lurch page, and I spent an afternoon working on a super duper spreadsheet to make it super-easy to track the comings and goings of various funds. What an exciting thing to do on a weekend, I know.

Category: ZRC News | 2 Comments »
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Posted By John Sears on May 4, 2010

So, the ZRC has been passing around a petition at some of its public appearances lately, inspired by George Romero’s presence at Horrorhound, and we thought it should go up online as well, so that people can add their names as they wish.

In essence, the ZRC is asking that Mr. Romero, who is currently hard at work on another movie, take a kindler, gentler and more open approach to Zombies in future works. We know that he’s capable of making a surprisingly Zombie-friendly film; Creepshow was directed by Romero, after all, and it features a complex cast including two Zombies who come back from their watery graves to avenge injustice and punish their murderer. No brain-eating, no intestine pulling, just Zombies of Justice.

So we thought, why can’t we see more Zombies like that? More *positive* Romero-directed Undead.

Hence our petition. We came up with a short petition and passed it around Horrorhound, and got a great response. But what about our online readers? Well, your chance to sign is now. Just send an email with your name to petition@jsears.xidus.net and you will be added to the list. We have several noteworthy signatories, including Baron Mardi of Atomic Age Cinema, Karlos Borloff of Monster Madhouse TV, Dave Pruett of The Dark Carnival Film Festival and Marv Blauvelt, acclaimed horror actor and director.

It’s a proud list, and we’d be honored to have your name on it.

Read the petition here.

Category: ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Movies, Petition, Romero

Posted By John Sears on May 4, 2010

Pictures behind the cut.

(more…)

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | No Comments »
Tags: Public Appearance

Posted By John Sears on May 4, 2010

Ahh, film festivals. The ZRC likes going to film festivals.

Last Saturday we went to the Women of Horror 2 festival in Chicago, and a lengthy post about it is just now going up because the hotel didn’t have free wifi, and the thought of uploading a ton of HD pictures with some pay system makes me feel a little faint.

I mean, seriously. This new camera has 14 gorgeous megapixels of Zombie-capturing resolution.

So, first the textual recap. The ZRC once again had a booth to offer up literature and merchandise to an eager public. We sold several of our shiny new Lurch for the Cure shirts, and for once the gods of sizing fortune smiled upon us, so we didn’t run out of any particular size and can put them on the online store this evening. Huzzah!

(Mental note: reorder literature. Running a bit low.)

We got to have fun discussions with a number of people about various Zombie-related issues, and picketed the theatre for a while to raise awareness. They weren’t exhibiting any anti-Zombie films, so it was less of a picket-line than a… picket session? Rally? Yeah, we’ll go with rally. The drivers on busy Milwaukee Avenue definitely took notice of our pro-Zombie movement, and we got some honks in support, which I’ll take to mean there’s a growing groundswell of support for Zombiedom and Zombie Rights in Chi-town.

Of particular note are a few Pro-Zombie events in the next month that the ZRC learned about at the festival. There’s a Zombie Prom, believe it or not, coming up in Chicago. Finally, a dance where Zombies can feel free to be themselves and show off their finery without fear of torch-bearing mobs. Also mentioned was a Zombie themed Tiki party on Sunday, May 30th, which could be a great time for any Tiki-loving Zombies, or Zombie-loving Tiki people for that matter. Come for the drinks with little umbrellas, stay for the Undead Suffrage!

We were also personally invited to come to the Zombie March at Millenium Park on June 5th. Thousands of Zombies and their allies will converge on the shores of Lake Michigan in a show of Living-Dead solidarity, which we think sounds truly awesome. The ZRC will commit to attending the March at a minimum, and is looking into its schedules for the other events as well.

After a long day of conversing about Zombies and selling merchandise for the Cause (and other causes as well), the ZRC had to call it a day and go back to its hotel. Once again we went forth into the wider world, and found, if not complete acceptance, at least a growing support for Zombies and their civil rights. Tiki parties? Proms? Rallies? I think Zombies are making a mainstream breakthrough at long last.

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

Posted By John Sears on April 30, 2010

So it seems that we have an online counterpart in the Anti-Zombie camp, namely the Zombie Research Society. They model themselves as a research organization dedicated to protecting the public from a nefarious threat. That threat? Why, the ‘Zombie pandemic’, of course.

The Zombie Research Society has a number of pieces up covering aspects of this ‘pandemic’, the ‘threat’ posed by Undead Americans, and various grisly projections and quasi-scientific and historical investigations into the subject. Particularly interesting is their ‘Outbreak Map’ page, which attempts to tie any number of historical tragedies/unexplained calamities to an Undead cause. The Mayans? Apparently eaten by zombies. Roanoke? Zombies. You get the idea.

The Zombie Research Society has decided to designate May ‘Zombie Awareness Month’, and use a grey ribbon campaign to raise public awareness of the threat they claim emanates from the Differently Animated.

May is Zombie Awareness Month.

Many films important to the evolution of the modern zombie are set in the month of May, from the original Night of the Living Dead, 1968, to the well received Dawn of The Dead remake of 2004.

Also, because Spring naturally brings with it a sense of renewal and hopefulness, May is the perfect month to emphasize continued vigilance in the face of the coming zombie pandemic.

Vigilance? How about respect? Tolerance? What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?

The ZRC cannot let this go unanswered. We have therefore decided to declare, contra the Zombie Research Society, that May 2010 will be ‘Zombie Cultural Appreciation Month’. Throughout the month of may the ZRC will highlight positive contributions of Zombies and their allies to the larger human society, especially contributions in art, culture and philanthropy.

Stay tuned to the ZRC for more details.

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | 37 Comments »
Tags:

Posted By John Sears on April 30, 2010

So the latest comic from nerd-tastic XKCD contains a take on the traditional Zombie Pandemic scenario:

As you can see, Randall Munroe has decided to show his true lifeist colors with this heartless display of anti-Zombie violence, but also note how closely he adheres to several outdated Zombie stereotypes. Zombies are created in a laboratory (presumably a government one); Zombies come from a chemical maguffin with fantastic and completely unexpected effects; the creation of a Zombie is a horrible accident, all a Zombie wants to do is devour human flesh, and so on. Even George Romero, the patron saint of Zombie-bashing, has moved on to a (slightly) more enlightened and nuanced understanding of the Differently Animated.

But not Mr. Munroe. He’s still stuck in the 80s, watching Return of the Living Dead on VHS.

For shame.

Category: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Tags: Comics

Posted By John Sears on April 26, 2010

Now that we’ve finally gotten ourselves a very slick and up-to-date digital camera, the ZRC has also decided to take a stab at videographically documenting our long and noble struggle for Zombie Rights.

Or in this case, making a silly test video to try and learn the camera features.

Warning: this video is both very shaky (since I was holding the camera with one hand) and accompanied by my hilariously awful Arnold impersonation.

For future videos you can always go to our campaign’s Youtube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/zombierightscampaign.

Isn’t technology awesome?

Category: Zombie Media, ZRC News | 1 Comment »
Tags: ZRC TV