We hope you'll find this blog an educational, entertaining, and inspiring source of information, whether you're recently undead, a long-time member of the differently animated, or a still-living friend of your fallen, yet risen again, brethren. Everyone with an interest in zombie rights is welcome!
If nothing else these periodic updates on the local fauna we’re attracting here at the ZRC Compound by letting native plants take over the backyard is good for getting a bit of random attention, so…
This is the older rabbit with one eye that occasionally comes around our compound. I don’t know how it lost its eye, but otherwise the rabbit seems healthy enough.
Poor little guy.
Another rabbit.
Rabbit.. kisses? Nuzzles? I don’t know. It’s adorable I suppose.
Here’s the general flickr set of the Wildlife of the ZRC Compound
If you saw a bloody-mouthed, limping zombie Thursday wailing about brains and dragging entrails along Superior Street, don’t worry: It wasn’t the zombie apocalypse.
A group of about 80 young people in torn clothes and syrup-flavored blood were part of the second annual Duluth Zombie Walk.
Overall it sounds like it was a fun little gathering and the ZRC commends them, but the coverage again reflects some rather glaring misunderstandings in the community:
“It’s like when you’re a kid, there are monsters that scare you,” he said. “You can either hide in the closet or join them. It’s like facing your fears.”
Hoban said zombies make for a good monster that has bucked the mainstream — unlike some certain bloodsuckers.
“It’s a good counterbalance to vampires,” he said. “There is never going to be a zombie ‘Twilight.’ No zombie is every going to say, ‘Oh, I love you. I’m going to eat everyone’s brain but yours.’ ”
First: Zombies and vampires are not ‘monsters’, they are people too. Undead does not equal unperson, Mr. Hoban.
Look, seriously, journalists out there? Stop calling everything Zombie. Just because something is dormant or acts a little differently or in a way you disapprove of, that does not make it a Zombie, with all the challenges that entails and rights that it SHOULD entail.
Still, at least this most recent example isn’t as patently offensive as many of the others we’ve seen:
“Zombie” stars, or type Ia supernovae, are helping astronomers understand the mysterious force known as dark energy, which is causing the universe to expand at ever-accelerating speeds.
When these stars die, they come back to life by absorbing matter from a companion star, hence their “zombie” nickname. These supernovae shine with the brightness of approximately one billion suns.
Basically, some astronomy boffins want to refine their understanding of these supernovae so they can use them to measure distances in the universe better and thus understand it more deeply. All well and good.
And at least here the stars are *arguably* almost kinda sorta dead for a while, to the extent a star can be dead, not having been alive.
And at least here there’s some Different Animation going on, in that these supernovae work in a dramatically altered way from ordinary stars.
But still; we’re not talking about people, or even animal life, that ceases to be alive, and comes back in a radically new form, or is otherwise similar to an Undead state. White dwarf stars aren’t ever really inert, and were never *alive*, so this is a stretch.
Basically, the media sees a Zombie hook in everything these days. In some cases, like here, it’s more silly than harmful, but for consistency we have to ask that people TRY and refrain from overusing the term ‘Zombie’. It applies to our clients and they’d like to keep it.
Mega-huge Living Supremacist adaptation of Max Brooks’ infamous ‘World War Z’ hit more snags recently:
World War Z, the would-be epic adaptation of Max Brooks’ oral history of a fictitious zombie pandemic and near-apocalypse, spent so many months in development hell that the project seemed doomed, even with the presence of director Marc Forster and International Movie Star® Brad Pitt. Paramount Pictures finally put together a co-financing deal with Skydance Productions to cover the film’s huge cost, however, and just like that, it was reanimated and dragged from the grave. Forster continues casting, but he’ll have to do without two big names who were in talks several weeks ago, as both Matthew Fox and Ed Harris will not appear in World War Z.
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In Fox’s case, this is due to a scheduling conflict, as he is set to play a villainous serial killer to Tyler Perry’s titular detective in I, Alex Cross. As for Harris, his lack of involvement in unexplained for the time being.
First? Nice color commentary there, making sure to get the Anti-Zombie imagery right up front in the introduction. Very classy.
Second, the ZRC can only hope that Ed Harris took one look at the vicious Living Supremacism in the project and bolted for the hills; if so, and he wants to talk we’d be happy to air his grievances and support of the Undead.
You have no idea how happy.
Sadly by this point even major stars fleeing probably won’t derail this train of Anti-Zombie hate. More news as it develops.
So Seattle and New Jersey have a rivalry going over holding the title of the World’s Largest Zombie Walk from the Guinness people (records, not beer) and apparently Seattle was slated to have another go on Saturday.
There’s something alluring about zombies — that white skin, those sunken eyes and most of all, those bloody lips.
They’re taking over Seattle’s Fremont district Saturday.
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Last year, Fremont scored a Guinness World record with the most zombie walkers, numbering 3,894, but New Jersey trumped that record last October with 4,093. This year, Fremont organizers hope to take back the crown, by drawing more than 6,000.
They are luring folks in with makeup artists on site, two beer gardens, bands and food trucks. There’s also going to be a “Thriller” dance.
Most of the article focuses on the makeup aspects of giving the Living a good appearance of greenface; there’s no mention of the politics of Zombie Walks, of the merits of promoting Zombie culture in this fashion, or the potential drawbacks; it’s all about Living people having an excuse to put on makeup. Which is fine, in and of itself, but it can lead to a complete failure to consider the status and plight of the Differently Animated in America.
Case in point at the end of the piece:
David Amdal, a Fremont business owner, was trying out the makeup for the first time, before the walk.
“I’m just an onlooker, but I find it fascinating,” said Amdal, in his 50s. “It completely eludes me why people want to look ugly or repulsive. It’s completely opposite of what we usually want, to be attractive.”
Oh really? First of all, subcultures redefine what the mainstream considers ‘ugly’ as attractive all the time. Punks, Hipsters, Goths, etc. Secondly, it is worth keeping in mind, the ‘ugly’ or ‘repulsive’ appearance of many Zombies is not a fashion choice, or something you can buy at Hot Topic; they were Unborn that way, so to speak. Some *slight* consideration of that, and the sensitivity Zombies might feel toward their appearance, would be nice, Mr. Amdal.
Just a suggestion.
Amdal’s reaction is one of the major potential sticking points in these walks: the Living can see them as a chance to dip their toe in Zombie Culture without understanding it or making an effort to engage it, and that.. that can be truly problematic for The Movement.
Hope you had good luck with your walk, Seattle. And good luck with some more Zombie-Living outreach in the future too.
Seriously, I mean, ok, ‘The Mist’ was a bit underwhelming and ‘The Green Mile’ had Tom Hanks, who is kind of my nemesis, but I will always treasure Shawshank (who doesn’t?), so even knowing Frank Darabont was involved with ‘The Walking Dead’ hurt, it really did.
Frank Darabont was a double winner at the Saturn Awards. The Walking Dead won Best TV Presentation, and Darabont himself was awarded the George Pal Memorial Award by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror. With everyone in attendance excited about season two of The Walking Dead, Darabont had a few spoilers to share.
First the article mentions that the second season will cover the comic book’s farm story arc, which we talked about on the blog previously, and then we get into some stuff about character development:
“Those relationships are developing. These people are actually really getting to know each other over the course of this season. Largely they were strangers from one another in the first season except for a few of those characters, obviously. Now they’re becoming just one big dysfunctional family and that’s really fun to write. That’s really fun to concoct the stories and be in the room with the writers that I have and talk through all the possibilities.”
Again we see the obsessive focus on only the LIVING characters. What about the Zombies, Mr. Darabont? What about them?
I guess nobody really cares about them at AMC. Go figure.
Well, WE care, Mr. Darabont. The ZRC cares. And we’re going to keep after you Walking Dead types in the future. It’s just a shame it had to come to this, and a shame that so many people who we might otherwise have respected have decided to sign on to making Anti-Zombie propaganda like ‘The Walking Dead’
We’ve mentioned the growing wave of ‘pranks’ sabotaging roadside electronic signs to feed the public Living Supremacist warnings about imminent attacks by the Differently Animated.
Commuters in the St. John’s area who might have been expecting a heads-up about construction delays were instead warned about something else: zombies.
“Zombie invasion! Run!” said one of the messages that appeared on an electronic traffic sign positioned near Windsor Lake, one of the main water supplies in St. John’s.
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A final message said, “Rule #2: Double tap!”, a line from the 2009 Woody Harrelson comedy Zombieland.
I’ve mentioned again and again that these are not harmless or completely isolated incidents; this is definitely an emerging trend, more likely copycats than some sort of organized effort.
Still, now that it has hopped national borders and become an international scourge, we need to make a serious effort to nip this in the bud.
First Virginia, then Denver, now Newfoundland. Where will it stop? When will Anti-Zombie jerks realize that they are doing grave harm to a vulnerable community and spreading pointless fear amongst the already grossly misled Living Community?
You know how sometimes life throws you a curve-ball and you end up seeing something that really transforms your view of the world, or some tiny portion thereof?
Now, we’ve seen Anti-Zombie and Zombie Friendly commercials here at the ZRC before; I am not unschooled in the art of using Zombies to market a product, either positively or negatively. But this..
This just blew me away. Utterly. This is without a doubt the most elaborate Anti-Zombie commercial I’ve ever seen. Ever.
Entitled ‘ DELIVER ME TO HELL – A zombie interactive adventure’, this is like a Choose Your Own Adventure Indie Film using the power of Youtube. It starts off as just another ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ story set in an office, but quickly becomes much much more… a young woman fleeing, naturally, a ravenous horde of the Undead ends up trapped atop a shipping container somewhere in New Zealand. She pulls out her phone and, inexplicably, calls up the deliver app for a local pizza chain, Hell Pizza.
And for some reason, their website looks EERILY like Ian’s Pizza here in Madison’s used to look. Weird. Maybe it’s the font? Or maybe there’s some worldwide pizza conspiracy?
At any rate, a Fire and Brimstone themed pizza chain is apparently her only hope for salvation, and the call gets through to an intrepid pizza delivery man/pizza chef who promptly takes off in the company vehicle to deliver her order… and that’s where it gets weird.
(Hell Pizza, anyone?)
This is an actual, interactive experience all right; you will be presented with a series of decisions that have to be made; the wrong one seems to lead inevitably to a gruesome and usually Zombie-inflicted death. Then the video rewinds, a voice presumably that of Satan himself, taunts you, and you get to choose the other path from your last branching-off point.
(Choose wisely, at least, as wisely as you can in a Zombie Hating movie like this.)
All along the way as your characters try to survive the Apocalypse, the faithful pizza man perseveres, wearing his Hell Pizza shirt, driving his Hell Pizza car, carrying his Hell Pizza box in its Hell Pizza bag… hungry yet? They intend you to be.
Needless to say there are even instances where the pizza man and/or a traveling companion has to risk their very life to keep that box intact and on its way, which given the setting is absolute lunacy.
But it’s a commercial for Hell Pizza, which means that said pizza is literally the most important thing on Earth.
This is utterly astounding. As a serious fan of indie horror films I cannot believe the quality of the production, the cinematography, the pacing, it’s all fantastically done… which makes it all the more horrible for the grotesque defamation and exploitation of the Undead it entails, all in the name of selling pizza.
Pizza that, I might add, I can’t even picket, let alone order, since the stores are on the far side of the world.
The only upside for us here at the ZRC is that I finally have proof that the Anti-Zombie crowd is on the side of evil itself. A Satanic pizza chain from New Zealand confirms it.
‘DELIVER ME TO HELL’ sets a new standard for Anti-Zombie propaganda, folks. You have never, ever seen anything like this before, and hopefully never will again.
(Now go to Hell. Maybe the one that sells pizza.)
The ZRC rates ‘DELIVER ME TO HELL’ as Living Supremacist. Utterly amazing, but Living Supremacist.
I’m embedding the start video below but you’re going to have to go to Youtube to see the rest anyway, so you might as well just hop on over there directly.
We’ve had our issues with Cracked.com before, and this video certainly isn’t perfect, presenting some harmful stereotypical imagery about the Differently Animated, but on the whole it seems to be a satire of the Zombpocalypse concept. Check it out:
See, they fool you a bit, don’t they? It starts off with a classic hateful scene right out of Romero, ‘Zombies’ bashing down the poorly fortified entrances of a house, moaning, groaning for flesh and the like, a group of survivors huddling in the living room, down to the last bullet in the one remaining gun..
But then things get, well, complicated, don’t they? When you have to take into account the feelings of the Zombie population, suddenly it’s not as simple as grabbing a shotgun and a handful of nails before you squat in some abandoned home.
Which is where the Zombie Rights Movement comes in. We already consider those feelings, and are looking for solutions, peaceful methods of coexistence and brotherhood between the Differently Animated and the Living. It’s what we do.
Meanwhile, we have a video to review. For making a good-faith but still somewhat biased attempt at sending up the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ mythology, we award ‘Dealing With The Guy Who’s Clearly Hiding a Zombie Bite’ our second-best rating, that of Zombie Tolerant.
Is there anything that can’t be tied to hating the Differently Animated these days?
Perhaps you thought to yourself at one point, ‘The Space Program seems like a fairly safe topic. Surely I can read up on NASA without finding ugly, Living Supremacist rhetoric in my web browser.’
NASA is very good at preparing for almost every conceivable problem. In that spirit, visitors to NASA should also be prepared. Wear sunscreen, drink plenty of water, observe fire exits, and always be ready for zombie attack. Even the Center For Disease Control recognizes the need for preparedness for the zombie apocalypse.
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If zombies approach your launch viewing area,
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Don’t be tempted to humanize them, reason with them, or feel sorry for them. They make look like your poor dead friend, but they’re not.
This same post also provides a handy list of weapons to use in massacring those innocent Undead who might have come out to watch a Shuttle launch as well, assuming that since their tax dollars help pay for NASA they have just as much right to be there as the Living:
Weapon Useful? Comments
Shotgun Yes Can separate head from body. No need to get close. This is the best zombie fighting weapon.
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Smacking on nose with rolled up newspaper No Seriously? You just want to die, don’t you?
Really? Associating the exploration of space with bashing the Undead on Earth? Just who would want to do that, and would NASA condone their actions?
My name is Renna Warren. I’m a chemical engineer living in Knoxville, TN. I’ve won a spot at the STS-135 NASA Tweetup. That means that I and 149 others will tour some exciting places, meet people involved in the final launch of the Space Shuttle program, and snag some great seats 3 miles from the pad for the launch. Technically, NASA would like us to use those great press viewing area seats to report back, via twitter or something else, our shuttle launch experience. We’ll have wifi, tables, powerstrips. While some of my fellow Tweeters may be almost like real journalists, I feel more like I’m just playing at being a rocket scientist and a journalist at the same time.
A yellow journalist maybe!
As is often the case these days, I am outraged. This is what qualifies one to be an embedded reporter to cover a historic event, the last shuttle launch?
NASA should immediately make it clear that their organization does not tolerate this Zombie bashing. They should also ensure that at least one Zombie Friendly source is reporting from their event to balance out this rampant hatemonger.
Otherwise I think it’s clear that the forces of bigotry will triumph and sully that historic occasion, and nobody wants it to go down that way in the history books.
