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Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Election Tuesday

So the Republicans have taken back the House of Representatives and closed the gap in the number of seats separating them from the Democrats in the Senate.  Whoopy fucking do!

It should come as no surprise that it doesn't matter to us zombies whether the country is run by the Blue team or the Red team.  Both of those teams become the Scared Shitless team when we come to play.  Both sides of the aisle taste the exact same when they're being devoured.  They taste of flesh, they taste of blood, and they taste of failure.  If you're wondering, failure tastes a lot like parsley.

The only time in recent memory that the undead have taken any interest in politics was during Bush's presidency.  Sure, he talked a big game about the War on Terror, but I'm here to tell you folks that he wasn't waging that war on terrorists.  No, he was engaging the United States and its allies (such as Kenya...hurray?) in an epic conflict against the only terror that actually matters: us.  Bush was secretly funneling funds and troops in an effort to fight zombies.

Don't believe me?  Here's the press conference:



Luckily Bush didn't count on one key fact.  That fact was that he is an idiot.  Look, no one is denying that he's suited to fighting zombies.  He's from Texas, after all, where both the guns and the spice must flow.  If he were actually the person doing the fighting we might have been in a lot of trouble.

Instead, though, he stayed at home and tried to convince others that they needed to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq (two of the undead's largest population centers).  He even went after one of our most famous zombies, Osama Bin Laden.  It's true, Osama is one of us.  Do you really think that an older man requiring constant medical care could survive this long in the desert by running from cave to cave?  Of course not.  That's just absurd.  He's actually a zombie.

Sadam Hussein wasn't a zombie, but he certainly could have passed for one when the soldiers dragged him out of that hole.

Now, though, it doesn't matter who wins what state or whether the Donkey or the Elephant is voted the Animal Least Likely to Fail by the citizens of the United States of America.  In fact, if they keep raising taxes the way they have been, people might be lining up for miles to be eaten instead of us having to go find our meals.  An easy meal is the best kind of meal.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Prologue of the New Book

PROLOGUE

    Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
  
A guy walks into a college medical facility to be a paid guinea pig for an experimental inoculation for mad-cow disease.  Everything goes fine during the procedure except for the part where an excessively large needle is jammed into him; that part kind of sucks.  The guy collects his money and is already mentally spending the loot as he leaves the clinic.  Suddenly, without warning, he is viciously attacked by a zombie.

    It’s common knowledge that a zombie bite is fatal.  It kills you while you experience a rather agonizing full-body pain, and then it reanimates you into a genuine non-living, non-breathing member of the undead.  There is no cure, and a bite from one of the living dead boasts a one hundred percent fatality rate.

    This particular gentleman is no different.  While he manages to break free of his attacker, he suffers a bite that goes through his shirt sleeve and takes a chunk out of his shoulder.  This is before the actual announcement that zombies are wandering the Earth has been made to the public, however, so he mistakes the facts of the situation and screams at his assailant, “What the fuck are you doing, you homeless freak!  You fucking bit me!  Now I need a goddamn tetanus shot!”

    The man runs away just as fast as his legs can carry him.  Unbeknownst to him, a campus security guard heard the commotion and comes over to investigate.  He is truly an imposing figure at the spry age of sixty-eight and is armed with an awe-inspiring flashlight and a shiny whistle.  Zombies, of course, don’t feel fear, so despite his mastery of the art of calling a tow truck to remove a car parked in a fire lane, he is quickly devoured.

    The wounded science experiment makes it to his car without further incident and gets in.  He drives himself to the nearest hospital and seeks medical attention for his injury.  Even though blood from his wound drips all over the receptionist’s window, he is told that he will have to wait in line because it is simply packed in the ER that night.  His eyes dart back and forth between the group of doctors and nurses standing almost directly behind the woman discussing the latest episode of America’s Got Talent and the completely empty waiting room.  Not wanting to be a bother, he takes a seat and picks up the November 1991 issue of People from the table next to him.

    Six hours later, he dies and reanimates while idly flipping through the pages of a magazine declaring Aerosmith to be the hottest up-and-coming new band in the country.  His final thought as a human being is the following:

    “Did I remember to put the cap back on the toothpaste this morning?”

    Truly he would have become one of the world’s most profound philosophers with thoughts as insightful as that one if he hadn’t tragically passed away.

    Hi, my name is Mitch, and I want to brutally murder you and feast upon your flesh.  No, seriously, I do.  I don’t know why you’re smiling like you are, but just as soon as I figure out how to get to you, I’m going to kill you.  Afterwards, I’m going to throw all sense of propriety out the window and stuff my face full of your tasty skin before washing it down with a soothing cup of your blood.

    Just the thought of it makes me giggle like a school girl.  Tee hee!  See?  I told you that I’m giggling.

    Being the nice guy that I am, I’ll let you in on a little secret.  You know the story that I just told you?  It was about me.  I know what you’re thinking.  What a shocking twist so early in this instant classic of a manuscript!

    Fun Mitch Fact #1: I’ve killed and devoured three different game show hosts.  There have also been five of the hot chicks those shows used to introduce worthless prizes while smiling and generally looking mildly stupid.

    I was going to use a different word that ‘stupid’, but on the off-chance that someone who is actually concerned with something as idiotic as political correctness has survived the zombie apocalypse to this point, I decided to switch it at the last second.  Also, to anyone who is a moron that I may have offended by using ‘stupid’, I sincerely apologize.  I’m deeply sorry that I might have accidentally pointed out your lack of intelligence.

    But hey, consider this: we zombies are the most politically correct people the world has ever seen.  White, black, Hispanic, Asian…it doesn’t matter to us.  We’ll gladly feast on every nationality with equal joy.  The list of things that we view as irrelevant includes, but is not limited to:

    Race (everyone’s the same color when they’re in our intestines)

    Religion (or lack thereof)

    Tax bracket

    Height

    Weight (although given the choice, we’ll go with the fatties every time)

    IQ

    Type of car owned (as long as you drive nice and slow)

    Taste in music

    Diseases infected with

    Political affiliation (we’re the true bi-partisans)

    Favorite sports teams (I refuse to eat Cubs fans, though; they’ve been through enough)

    I’m so proud of the Brotherhood of the Undead when I think of how we’ve accepted every walk of life into the fold.  It would bring tears to my eyes if my body was still capable of pushing fluid through my tear ducts.

    Despite the fact that I am indeed a zombie, no, I do not know what started this wonderful little zombie apocalypse.  I want to make that clear right from the very start since it’s the most common question that I’m asked.  Everyone seems to be surprised that I don’t know, which makes zero sense when you actually think about it.  It’s not like there’s a copy of The Big Book of Undead Trivia stapled to you when you reanimate.

    Well, it appears as if you and I are going to be stuck with each other for a while.  I suppose that you could always opt to put down this book and walk away, but let me say with all do respect that you will regret doing so.  Not just because this is going to be one of, if not the, greatest novels ever written by an Undead American (that’s a pretty safe bet), but also because I will come to your house and eat your dog.  If you don’t have a dog, I’ll eat your cat.  If you don’t have a cat, I’ll eat your hamster.  If you don’t have a hamster, I’ll eat whatever pet you do have.  And if you don’t have a pet, I’ll…um…I dunno, maybe I’ll download virus-filled porn onto your computer.

    That’s right, something is going to die, whether it’s Muffy the Poodle or your computer’s hard drive.  So I’d strongly suggest that you keep reading until you’re dismissed and/or devoured.

    One thing that you’ll probably notice right away is that we zombies don’t really notice the passage of time.  Why would we?  It’s not like we’ve got any pressing appointments on the horizon.  We just tend to go with the flow, wandering aimlessly until we find something that peaks our interest.  We can’t eat time, so we don’t notice it.

    Even though I’m obviously a bit of an atypical member of the undead, I find myself often falling prey to the same disinterest.  I urge you to keep this in mind as we proceed.  If you’re looking for exact dates and times, you’re search is going to be futile.  Besides, being that anal about things isn’t good for your health or your ass.

    So come, Sherman, step into the Wayback Machine with me and journey to a time long ago, when humans were still the dominate species on Earth and people were concerned with such minor things as government-granted bailouts and whatever the hell a Glee was.  Be sure to keep all hands and feet inside the Wayback Machine until it comes to a complete stop, and thank you for your patronage.

    Flashback sequence go!

Chapter One of the New Book

CHAPTER ONE

    The story of my coming into zombiehood is also the story of how I met Thomas Jefferson.

    See, that’s what we in the business call a teaser sentence.  If that’s not what it’s actually called, it damn well should be.  The reader sees the name “Thomas Jefferson” and the wheels start turning.  Am I talking about the third President of the United States, or is there another individual that I’ve encountered that just happens to share the same name?  Maybe there is something more sinister afoot, something so horrible that it will rock the very foundation of everything that we hold near and dear.  There’s only one way to find out, so press on, brave soldier, press on!

    So there I was, sitting in a chair in a hospital waiting room and attempting to come to grips with the fact that I had died and had gotten better.  I felt like the punch line of a Monty Python gag.

    I was absolutely sure that I had died.  Believe me when I say that dying isn’t something that you’ll mistake for something else any time soon.  When you die, you know that you died.

    What made things worse was that the vast majority of my memories hadn’t come back with me.  I still knew who I was.  I was the always lovable and completely irrepressible Mitch Mylastnameisntanyofyourfuckingbusiness.  I remembered getting the swine flu inoculation hours earlier, and I remembered my encounter with the vicious hobo afterward.  Beyond that, though, it was just a hazy fog full of disjointed images and snatches of conversation.  Even stranger than my death-induced amnesia was that I didn’t give a shit about my past or the loss of it.

    You would think that it would have bothered me not to remember the details of my life, but it simply didn’t.  I had died just moments before; compared to that, not knowing when the electric bill was due didn’t quite make my list of Top 100 Things I Needed to Know.  After all, now I was a…

    Um, what was I, anyway?  Well, I had been bitten by a stranger on a dark street, died, and reanimated (I never thought that I’d be using that term with regards to myself), so if television and B-rated movies were any indication, I was probably a zombie.  A vampire had to suck blood out of me while being a whiny bitch complaining about having to be alone and falling in love with a human, right?  I would have gotten a lot fuzzier if a werewolf had bitten me, and besides, it wasn’t a full moon that night.  The only thing that fit was that I was now a zombie.

    It was best to make sure, however, so I ran a quick check.

    Breathing?  Negative.

    Pulse?  Negative.

    Erection caused by a mental image of naked Jessica Alba?  Negative.  This one surprised me more than the first two combined.

    Huh, I had been turned into a zombie.  I did not see that one coming.

    Wait a second, weren’t zombies supposed to be mindless corpses that shambled around aimless and ate brains?  I looked down at the magazine still clutched in my hands.  I could read the words on the page, and I could still grasp their meanings.  With the exception of the memory loss thing, my brain seemed to be up to speed.

    Was it possible, just possible, that Hollywood hadn’t gotten something right?  I mean, I knew it was a stretch, but I couldn’t see any other possibility.  Could something that close to an impossibility have actually occurred?

    I had somehow managed to become one of the undead, so stranger things had indeed happened.  In fact, stranger things had happened in the last seven hours alone.

    What about that other part, the part about eating brains?  I glanced over at the receptionist seated behind her little pane of glass.  Yeah, you know what, I could totally go for eating that chick’s brain.  The rest of her looked quite tasty as well.  It wasn’t some burning desire that overrode everything else like the zombies in the movies, but I definitely wanted a piece of that hot skin-chewing action.

    I licked my lips in anticipation.  Was I really going to do this?  Did I have it in me to eat a living human being?

    Of course I did!  I was a zombie, you twat!  I was contractually obligated to attack and consume people.

    The only question mark was how I was going to go about doing it.  I didn’t have a wealth of people-eating experience under my belt, and if I did I had inconveniently forgotten it.  Should I just walk right up and take a bite?  That seemed so, I dunno, barbaric.  Being a zombie didn’t mean that I had to be uncivilized.  Maybe I should knock politely and inform her of my intentions in a calm and reassuring manner.

    One thing was for certain: I wasn’t going to accomplish anything by sitting in the rather uncomfortable waiting room chair.  I stood up slowly and took a deep breath, belatedly realizing that, since I no longer required air, it was a rather pointless action.  Almost timidly I walked over to the window and tapped on the glass.

    “Yes?” the receptionist asked, not bothering to look up from her computer screen.  From the reflection on her glasses I could see that paperwork had taken a backseat to YouTube.

    “I was wondering” if you’d mind if I tore a chunk out of your intestines “how much longer before a doctor can see me.”

    She glanced up with an expression of disdain.  “We’re very backed up tonight, sir.  You’ll just have to be patient.  Please go back to your seat and wait to be called.”

    I opened my mouth to respond when a question presented itself.  How the hell was I talking if I didn’t breath?  I almost failed high school biology, but I was fairly sure that vocal cords needed air to make noise.  I dismissed it as being irrelevant.

    Before I could continue on with the line of query that was clearly striking terror in the heart of my soon-to-be victim, a loud crashing sound from behind me interrupted the proceedings.  I turned to find something that restored my faith in Hollywood: a real honest-to-goodness zombie.  It appeared to have once been an employee of the fast food restaurant across the street, as it was still wearing the cheesy (pun intended if it’s funny, no pun intended and you’re reading too much into it if it wasn’t) red and yellow uniform complete with the somewhat creepy smiling clown logo.  Now, though, the former woman and current animated corpse was clearly a card-carrying member of the undead, right down to the intestines hanging out of its torn open stomach and the huge chunk missing from its face.

    And it was even stumbling towards us slowly with its arms outstretched while moaning loudly!  As a fan of slightly terrible and extremely terrible movies, I now felt somehow vindicated for my questionable taste in cinema.  The zombie would probably be terrifying to anyone that was still alive, but I felt no fear.  I was already dead; what was it going to do to me, make me deader?

    It meandered right past me and began to pound on the glass window separating it from the receptionist.  The woman stared at it for a moment as she assessed the situation.  Finally, she simply shrugged and typed a few keys on her computer.

    “Before we get to your paperwork, I’ll need to know if you have insurance,” she told the animated corpse.

    The zombie moaned in reply as it continued its battery of the window.

    “I didn’t quite catch that, ma’am.  Did you say that you have Medicaid?”

    Another answering moan.

    The receptionist gave the zombie a stern look.  “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I don’t appreciate that kind of language.  It isn’t my fault that you’re sponging off the taxpayers by being on Medicaid.”

    I blinked.  “Um, I think that you might have misheard,” I put in.

    “Sir, this isn’t any of your concern.  I told you to go back and sit down until it’s your turn.”  She turned back to the clearly dead being standing before her.  “Now then, what’s the medical issue that you’re here for today?”

    One by one, more zombies began to file in through the doorway.  All of them completely ignored me and instead focused on the rather rude and yet strangely fascinating receptionist.  More and more hands began to bang on the glass, and small cracks began to form along the edges.

    “Folks, I’m going to have to ask you all to wait your turn,” she yelled sternly over the noise.  “Please have a seat in the waiting room and I’ll call you up one at a time.”

    In a moment that would forever prove that having a medical degree had no bearing on if you’re an idiot or not, a doctor opened the door separating the waiting room from the emergency room itself.  He took one glance at the situation developing before stepping out into full view and drawing himself up to his full height.  There was a hint of past muscle in his physique, and quite a bit more of a hint of a lack of recent exercise in his stomach region.

    “You people need to keep the noise down!” he demanded in a tone reminiscent of a father scolding children.  “We’re trying to save lives in here!”

    The dozen or so zombies that had piled into the waiting room immediately turned their attention to the licensed professional that had stumbled into their midst.  As they approached hungrily, the man seemed to loose a bit of his confidence.  Perhaps his years in medical school had taught him that people shouldn’t be up and walking around while horribly mutilated.

    “You really don’t want to be doing this,” he told his admirers.  “I played football back in high school, and I won my share of bar fights when I lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.”

    The zombies didn’t appear to be all that impressed.  The doctor, finally seeing the folly of tossing meaningless threats at this particular audience, turned to dash back through the door he had opened.

    He would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for that meddling Mitch.  I leaped forward and slammed the door shut.  One of his arms was already through the gap, and the sound of bones snapping as it became trapped between the door and the frame was audible even over the zombie choir.  He let out a shriek that sounded strangely like a squealing pig.  I pushed harder, and the limb was torn from his body.

    Blood spurted out of the stump, and even as he was staring at the impromptu fountain gushing from his body he slipped on some of the red stuff that had sprayed onto the floor.  The zombies surged forward and he disappeared from view beneath the pile of bodies.  Goodbye, Mr. Fancy Pants Former Football Player Doctor Man.

    Curiously, I opened the door and picked up the arm that had been severed.  Almost gingerly I took a small bite out of it like I was eating from a turkey leg and chewed thoughtfully.  Hey, this was pretty damn good!  If I were a judge on Iron Chef, I would say that it had a husky flavor, a boldness that really made it stand out while still being refreshing on the palette.  I would also say other pompous jackass things such as how it reminded me of warm summers in Tuscany.

    “Jesus mothafuckin’ Christ, you’re just gonna fucking eat that poor bastard’s arm?” a distinctly male voice demanded from behind me.

    I turned with the scrumptious limb to find a disheveled-looking individual dressed in an old military jacket and sporting a black Red Sox cap.  A lit cigarette was perched precariously between his index and middle fingers, and as I watched he took a drag off of it.  The smoke churned around in his mouth for a moment before floating out the right side of his face; his cheek was completely missing and the teeth underneath were exposed for the world to see.

    “Well, um, yeah, that was the plan,” I replied uncertainly.

    “Mothafucka!” He shook his head violently.  “Why the fuck would you do that, son?”

    “I’m, uh, a zombie and stuff.  This is kind of what we do.  Plus it tastes really good, and-”

    “For fuck’s sake, boy, maybe you didn’t notice while you were fucking eating an arm, but I’m a goddamn zombie, too!  Do you see me breaking off a doctor’s arm and munching it down?”

    “No, sir, I don’t see you eating a doctor’s arm.”  I felt like a child being scolded.

    “You’re damn right you don’t!”  He took another hit off the cigarette.  “That’s fuckin’ disgusting, that’s what it is.  Cannibal bullshit.  It’s not like you have to do it.  Your belly isn’t growling, is it?  You and me, we’re the only ones like this that can think for ourselves, we have to set a fucking example, you hear me?”

    I dropped the arm that I was holding.  It fell to the ground with both a thump and a squish.  “Hey, look, man, don’t judge me.  I’m a zombie, I can eat people if I want.”  I felt my temper beginning to flare.  “I don’t even know your name, and you’re trying to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do?”

    The man raised his hands.  “Hey, you know what, that’s fair.  I tend to get a little preachy sometimes.  I don’t want to come off as one of those preachy church mothafuckas that talk about love and acceptance before he beats you over the head with his fuckin’ Bible.”  He held out one of the hands to me.  “The name’s Thomas Jefferson.”

    Without thinking about it, I shook the offered hand.  “Thomas Jefferson?” I repeated.  “As in President of the United States Thomas Jefferson?”

    “What, just because I’m black I can’t be named Thomas fuckin’ Jefferson?  Just because he was a white aristocratic asshole that owned slaves, I can’t be named after him?”  He waved the hand holding the cigarette.  “Nah, I’m just fucking with ya.  The name really is Thomas Jefferson, ‘though most of my friends just call me Jefferson.”

    “I’m Mitch,” I replied, still not sure how to feel about the sudden arrival of my intelligent zombie colleague.  “Mitch [Name omitted from the manuscript].  Good to meet you.”

    He pointed at the swarm of zombies, now about twenty strong, that had finished with the doctor and were proceeding through the doorway into the emergency room.  “Look at those fuckers go,” he commented with a shake of his head.  “Just got done eating a modern day healer and already looking for more food.”  He spat something black onto the floor.

    I stared at him for a moment before recognition kicked in.  “Hey, wait a second,” I said slowly, “I know you.  You were at the swine flu inoculation trial.”

    “Right in one,” he beamed.  “I’m guessing that little prick of a shot is why you and me are standing here having this conversation instead of stumbling around and moaning like a couple of fucking morons.”  He snorted.  “Prick of a shot.  See what I did there?  Un-fucking-believable.  Let’s head on outside.  It’s getting a little cramped in here.”

    That it was.  The flow of zombies had picked up steadily, and it was becoming obvious that the hospital staff was going to have its hands full.  We made our way against the current of bodies and stepped out into the cool night.  It was strange; I knew that it was chilly outside, and I knew that I should be shivering without a coat on, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on me like it normally would.  I supposed it was one of the perks of being dead.

    When I had arrived at the hospital it had been a rather peaceful night, but now it appeared that all hell had broken loose.  People were running in every direction, screaming in panic and terror as they attempted to avoid the undead wandering the streets.  A few of the nearby buildings were on fire.  As flames shot out of the windows, plumes of smoke billowed into the black sky.

    As we watched, a fire engine came roaring down the street, its lights flashing and siren blaring.  It had to have been a good seventy miles an hour, and the driver was using it almost like a battering ram to clear the zombies out of the way.  It drove away out of view.

    “Now, I’m not saying that we don’t ever fucking eat people,” Jefferson said as if the end of the world wasn’t happening around him.  “If we start getting hungry or something, sure, let’s do it.  Bon appe-fucking-tit.  I’m just saying that if there’s no reason to do so, we shouldn’t be doing it.”

    I raised an eyebrow.  “You said that eating people was cannibal bullshit,” I reminded him.

    He shook his head.  “Nah, see, it’s only bullshit if you’re doing it for the hell of it.  If you’re eating to satisfy your stomach, that’s just survival, man.  Fucking Animal Kingdom, you know?  It’s the survival of the fittest shit that Darwin was talking about.”

    I stared at him for a long moment before finally saying, “You’re a complicated guy, Jefferson.”

    He tossed the cigarette butt on the ground and fished a pack of fresh smokes out of a coat pocket.  “I’m zombie that smokes and still thinks for himself.  You’d better fucking believe that I’m complicated.”  He lit a cigarette and took a long drag.  “I don’t suppose you remember anything before the shot?”

    “Not a thing.  You?”

    “Nope.”

    We watched as a car attempted to duplicate the fire engine.  Its wheel caught the edge of the street corner, however, and in a moment worthy of a Bruce Willis movie it flipped over and smashed down on its roof.  It skidded for quite a distance, farther than I would have guessed that it would have gone, and finally came to rest up against a mailbox.  The undead were swarming all over it even before it stopped moving.

    The driver didn’t emerge, but the passenger kicked out the glass that remained in her car window and slithered out through the opening.  The nearest zombie reached out and managed to grab her long hair.  She twisted her head violently and freed herself, leaving quite a bit of her blond locks clenched in her attacker’s fist.  She looked around wildly and, upon seeing the two of us standing there watching her, she began to run towards us.

    “Dumb bitch thinks we’re alive,” Jefferson said with a chuckle.

    I surveyed the situation.  The woman was on the opposite side of the street from us, and there was a lot of undead between us and her.  She was an agile little minx, I gave her that, but the odds didn’t look good that she would make it.

    “If she makes it here we’re going to kill her,” I told him.

    “Of course we’re going to fucking kill her.  She’s a human.  We’re zombies.  It’s what we fucking do.”  He paused.  “We’ll toss her back into the street for the fucking vultures out there.  No sense in wasting the meat.”

    “If there’s anything left, maybe we can wrap it up in some packing paper and store it in a freezer.  Then we’d have some on hand to make burgers or maybe some stew.”

    He turned to me with a wide grin that probably would have looked more jolly if half his face wasn’t gone.  “I guess that was some ‘waste not want not’ shit, wasn’t it?  I hope that I wasn’t a fucking tree hugger when I was alive.”

    As it turned out, we didn’t have to apply the Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle principles to our charging admirer.  She managed to dart through the zombies blocking her path without so much as a scratch.  At one point she fell to the ground awkwardly and I was sure that she had twisted an ankle, but she proved me wrong as she scrambled back to her feet.  With a smile mixing hope and triumph she put one foot on the curb.

    That’s when the taxi slammed into her and threw her a good twenty feet.

    “Well there you go,” I said.  “The problem solved itself.”

    “The universe works in mysterious ways,” Jefferson answered.  “So what do you want to do now?”

    I shrugged.  “I dunno.  Want to go destroy the human race and make zombies the dominate species on Earth?”

    He thought it over for a moment.  “Sounds like a fuckin’ plan to me.”
  
  
  

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Halloween Twitter Extravaganza.....OF DOOM

Ah, Halloween, my favorite holiday.  It's the only time of year when someone can dress up as a nightmarish figure and wander around the neighborhood without being branded a stalker or pervert.  As an added bonus, children are encouraged to put themselves into sugar-induced comas, and we all know that coma patients are a perennial favorite among the undead.  As much fun as it is to stalk our victims as we traditionally do, sometimes you just don't feel like shambling after someone and want a nice easy meal.  People in comas are our equivalent to microwave dinners.

When I was still a member of the living breathing sacks of meat group, I used to enjoy the annual Top 100 Scariest Movie Moments that aired on Bravo.  I was something of a horror movie buff, so this was right up my alley.

That changed when I was, you know, brutally assaulted by a zombie and turned into one of the undead.  It's hard to get frightened by a guy with a butcher knife when all you can think about is, "Why is he going after that woman, there's a much tastier-looking man in the next room over!"

As a tribute to this former favorite of mine, I've decided to post via Twitter the Top Ten Scariest Movie Moments to Zombies.  These are the moments that make the living dead feel that creeping sensation run down our spines.  You can thank me later for such an in-depth examination into the zombie psyche.

From now until Halloween I'll be posting these moments, so be sure to check back frequently.  If you don't, I swear that I'll track you down and peel the flesh from your muscles before devouring your tasty innards.  Even if you do I'll still do that to you, but at least we'll have something to discuss pleasantly during the process.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Undead vs. Living #1: Celebrities

We've all seen the pictures and videos.  Celebrities, especially women, like to show off a lot of skin when they're walking down the aisle of those fake award shows and movie premiers and the line leading towards the adoption office responsible for children from some country that doesn't appear on any self-respecting globe.  Theoretically, showing off the goods is supposed to make these women appear to be sexy and glamorous.  Or maybe it's just meant to give the gents erections in public so that hilarity will ensue.  Whatever the reason, they're forgetting one crucial fact.

Being that close to naked makes you a prime target for zombie attacks.

Don't believe me?  Do the math yourself.  What is it that zombies like to consume?  That's right, human flesh.  What are these celebrities shoving in our faces?  Lots of human flesh.  It's akin to smacking a bear in the face with fresh salmon.  That never ends up well for the salmon.

This all applies to your usual breed of zombie, of course.  I tend to avoid the celebrities myself.  There's just not a lot of meat on the bones.  I mean, can you imagine trying to make a tasty treat out of, say, Callista Flockhart?  Great actress, loved her in her guest appearance on The Practice back in the day, but come on, there's more edible material in a Chicken McNugget.  There's probably more edible material in the box the Chicken McNugget came in.

If I had to choose a celebrity to devour, though, I'd probably go with Emeril.  Yes, someone like Jorge Garcia would be more filling, but Emeril would know exactly which spices to apply to himself for that special dining experience.  BAM! 

Sunday, October 24, 2010

There is Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself...and Zombies

Oh, pish posh, pay no attention to the title of this, my very first blog entry.  You have absolutely nothing to fear from us, the folks of undead persuasion.  In fact, I would encourage you to stop fleeing in terror at the mere sight of us and instead embrace us as fellow members of the human race.  We are technically still members of the human race, you know.  The entire reason that we reach out with grasping hands when we encounter a living being is because we want to give everyone a nice big hug and let you know that everything will be all right.

Hello, my name is Mitch, and I'm something of a self-appointed representative for the zombie race.  You'll notice that I have rather strong hand-eye coordination since I am able to actually type up this blog, and I'm sure that you've observed by now that I'm just slightly more intelligent than your average living dead.  I would like to say that my being the way that I am disproves the stereotype that my people suffer under, but alas, this simply would not be true.  I assure you that I'm quite unique among my kind.

I'm here on the interwebs to spread a message of peace, a message of kindness, and a message of equality.  For far too long, we zombies have been separated from our still-breathing colleagues, and I believe that it's high time that we...

Okay, you know what?  This is asinine.  I thought that I could get through this with a straight face, but I see that I was dead (blatantly obvious pun) wrong about that.  So let's try this again.

Hello, my name is Mitch, and as the most intelligent and twisted member of the zombie hordes, I'm going to one day eat your face.  Ah, there, it's just so much more satisfying to put all the cards on the table and not hold anything back for the sake of courtesy.

On this blog, I'll be detailing my own personal rampage through the world, leaving no stone unturned as I seek to live life (unlife?) as no zombie before me has and no zombie after me will.  I'm told that the majority of my story will be told in the Undead Plague series by Tim Sprague, starting with the book Zombies by the Numbers: The Writer's Cut.  As I understand it, that particular book is being shopped around to agents even as I write this, so if you know of a reputable agent that's looking for a rather...unique manuscript, send he/she/it my way and I'll make sure that the writer gets the message.

Now that I've gotten the obligatory advertising out of the way, be sure to check back from time to time to see what hijinks I get into.  My life is a lot like that of Scooby Doo, except that I don't scare easily and I'd eat both the Scooby Snacks and the person handing them out.  I also don't have a pot-smoking hippie companion that constantly has the munchies, but since I've recently eaten someone fitting that description we'll just go ahead and run with it.

Until then, I've posted a slide show demonstrating exactly what it is that your typical zombie will do upon seeing a living person.  I understand that it's a heavy subject and that you might already have family members that have been devoured by the undead, so I replaced the cannibalistic rotting corpses with cute little kittens and the victims of said cannibalistic rotting corpses with still more cute little kittens.  Rest assured that no kittens were harmed in the making of the slides, although they all suffered from mysterious disappearances after the slides were completed.

Toodles for now!