"...And on his grave stone I want it to read, 'Here lies Sir James Paul McCartney, a pretty cool guy until he wrote that fucking Christmas song."

It's time to stop living in denial. I fucking hate...

Christmas- I've got nothing against snow, presents, gingerbread, togetherness, or peace on Earth. Nor do I have anything against reindeer, Jesus (you know, on a personal level), Santa (or his much more awesome helper, Krampus), or gross commercialism. All I really hate is people cramming shit down my throat. I hate Christmas for the same reason that I hate The Beatles, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire. They're all perfectly fine things which have been utterly fucking ruined by people who won't shut the fuck up about them and become personally offended when I don't get as jazzed about shit as they do. Except Wicked. That book actually does suck.

But I'm sick of people calling me a Scrooge because I'm not totally fucking pumped for Christmas. I actually enjoy seeing my family, buying gifts for people if I think they'll really enjoy them, cookies, and tiny lights on strings. But I don't see why Christmas should get to appropriate all that fun for itself. That shit can be done year-round. Let's not limit ourselves one day a year to talk to our parents and enjoy soft, ambient lighting. But furthermore, let's not get all bent out of shape if someone doesn't particularly enjoy Christmas. God forbid you have a bad family life, or too little money to buy presents. If someone isn't smiling and jolly this December 25th, give them the greatest gift of all: leave them the fuck alone.

But on the other hand, I really fucking love...

Irritating Christmas Shit- Ten points to the musical geniuses behind I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas, Dominic the Racist Christmas Donkey, and those Fucking Barking Dogs. I want to shake all of your hands for both having a sense of humor and trying to ruin the holidays for everyone. As if It's A Wonderful Life hadn't done that already. Fuck you, George Bailey. Every time a bell rings I say a swear just in hopes that it counterbalances someone getting their wings.

"Plus, they're closed on Sundays."

Today I heard it contested that Chick-fil-A was a good fast-food (or "quick-service" if you read their website) restaurant because they are a Christian company. If I weren't far too passive-aggressive and lazy to say something I might no longer have a job. Because if there's one (or one million) thing I can't fucking stand, it's...

Not Understanding the Difference Between Correlation and Causality- I get up roughly at the same time the sun begins to rise, though not by choice. So it is, therefore, safe to assume that my getting out of bed causes the sun to rise, right? Of course it is, but this specific situation just happens to be an exception to a rule. Just because two events happen in combination does not mean that they are casually related. Wikipedia fucking says so.

Chick-fil-A happens to have been founded by a Christian man who was, from what I can tell, fairly open about his faith. They also make fucking delicious chicken sandwiches. Believe it or not, these two things are not causally related. Just because someone is Christian it does not give them an innate ability to command chicken meat into a delicious sandwich. Call me a heretic, but I've actually heard that Jesus made some pretty awful fried chicken. That's why he stuck to bread and wine. Because above all else, Jesus understood sticking to your strengths. And marketing.

But more to the point, being a Christian does not cause you to run a quality business. Not being a greedy shithead does that. I mean, I don't know my history all that well, but I'm fairly certain some Christian institutions have been run less than scrupulously. By the same token, being an Atheist doesn't prevent you from cooking chicken properly. Or at least I don't think it does. Mine always burns, but that's just because the Holy Water I keep trying to boil it in bursts into flames when I touch it.

Not that I'm specifically setting out to pick on Christianity or Chick-fil-A. On Chick-fil-A's own website they specifically say that the decision to close their locations on Sunday is "as much practical as it is spiritual" because they just think their employees should have a guaranteed day off during the week. Good for them. And for the record, I don't think Christianity is any more or less stupid than pretty much any other organized religion. I'm just saying that I fucking hate when people give credit where credit isn't due. But on the other hand, I fucking love...

False Causality- When it's used for my own amusement, of course. For example, here's a graph of when I started watching Top Gear vs. how recklessly I drive:
Does watching Top Gear cause me to drive recklessly? Of course not, but it's fun to have someone else to blame. Similarly, a chart depicting how old I am vs. how frequently I masturbate:
From this graphic alone I could safely state that having an age in the double-digit numbers actually causes masturbation. And finally, for my last exhibit, I would like to show how many books I have read vs. how awkward I am in public places:Actually, I think I might be on to something with that one...

Horrified/Nothorrified

The United States Navy has achieved moderate success in designing a weapon capable of punching God in the face. The gun apparently fires a 20lb aluminum slug fast enough to break the speed of sound. Horrifying. But some researchers are saying that this technology could lead to new ways of launching air/space craft. Slightly less horrifying? All I know is that I love the idea of a weapon so huge and powerful that it can actually destroy itself after one shot. It seems so vindictive to attack someone with a gun that will, at the very least, require massive maintenance before its next use. I can only hope that the next step of research will be to program it to give an enormous middle finger, visible for up to the 100 miles the gun can fire, to its target.

"The science of life is a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen"

December 10, 1907- 1,000s of Londonites storm a park in the district of Battersea in order to protest a statue erected in memorial of a dog that had been operated on multiple times while fully conscious. The two women who testified that the professor at the University of London performed multiple surgeries on a live, conscious dog were successfully sued for libel.

Child Abuse Awareness Month is apparently in April, just FYI

Apparently everyone is changing their Facebook pictures to their favorite childhood cartoon characters if they are "against child abuse." This, if anyone wasn't sure, is fucking stupid.

Title goes here! I'm absolutely stealing this article from a friend who spent 15 minutes bitching about this to me earlier today, but I think it's worth repeating. Changing your profile picture on Facebook is not a reasonable action to claim stops child abuse. As far as I know, no charity is attached to this, so it's not like each switched profile picture raises money. And as my unnamed acquaintance pointed out, child abuse isn't exactly a divisive issue with some people strongly against it, some people strongly for it, and some people on the fence about it. Discussing your opposition to child abuse isn't likely to convert anyone who was previously all about hitting children. Which brings up the main point he was trying to raise- is there anyone out there who is for child abuse? Are people who beat their children even for it? I would assume they just think their own kids deserve it, but I doubt they're just doing it out of principle because they love the idea of hitting kids.

All switching your profile picture during a campaign like this does is allow you to feel smug, like you're making a difference without actually having to do anything. The phrasing of saying you're doing it "because you're against child abuse" is also loaded as all hell, and actually implies that anyone who doesn't change their picture is a chronic child abuser. So now you're also indirectly guilty of libel. How does that feel?

One could, if they wished to play Devil's Advocate, argue that things like this actually do help because they raise awareness of the issue. Linguists could argue that any time you talk about something like "stopping child abuse" you are helping to shift us to a public culture in which child abuse becomes more demonized and less likely to happen. But since no one takes that argument seriously when I make it in regards to not saying "gay" in a pejorative context, I'm not going to allow it here.

If anyone actually feels passionately about stopping child abuse there are probably plenty of organizations out there that would love to have your time, money, or both to assist them with their work. I found this one with a simple Google search.

So if you really care about an issue, shut the fuck up on Facebook and do something about it. What we're accomplishing with profile pictures and status updates is about as effective as spray painting "DON'T HIT KIDS" on a brick wall. Actually, it's probably less effective. Actually, I wonder if I still have any spray paint...

Please Enter Your Password, Then Press Pound

My apartment was designed to double as a Cold War fallout shelter. Or it just has layers and layers of lead paint. Or it was strategically designed as some sort of media-deprivation experiment. Either way, it's the only place in this area that I get absolutely shit cellphone service. And that makes me mad.

Spotty Service- As much as I hate people being glued to their phones, having proper reception has its advantages. Like being able to receive important calls and proceed to live my life, conscious of what's going on around me. I can't say how many fun and exciting happenings I've missed out on due to not receiving a call or text, but I can only assume that the number is in the hundreds and my friends are all just too polite to tell me about them. And it's not even the fact that I'm missing out on shit that makes me the most upset, but rather the seemingly self-aware amount of irony my phone, whom I will refer to as Rodger for the remainder of this article, injects into the timing of when it finally delivers all of my back messages.

If my understanding of cellphones is correct, which I have no reason to believe it isn't, when someone sends you a text and you don't have any reception the phone holds the message in a parallel dimension only accessible by a licensed mobile phone carrier or possibly four British children with a dusty wardrobe. Periodically, I think, your phone is supposed to check in with Narnia to see if you have any waiting messages that couldn't get through earlier due to the lamp post being blown out or something. Which is all fine and good, and I honestly couldn't think of a better way to work it, except for the fact that my particular phone seems to take joy in waiting to check for messages until it's far too late to do anything about them. For example, if I'm supposed to await instructions to meet someone at some place at some time Rodger likes to wait until I'm already at said location to send me the message from four hours ago telling me that the meeting is canceled. Or if someone would like to kindly inform me of something awesome going on, like someone selling magic beans in the town square, Rodger withholds the information until the very last bean has been sold. So while everyone else is up in the clouds stealing golden geese and over-sized novelty hams Rodger and I are sitting alone in my apartment listening to old Our Lady Peace albums and thinking about what to do for the rest of the night. Rodger always wants to play Sorry! but first of all I think that game sucks and second of all he is a cellphone and cannot even move the pieces correctly.

But even within my impenetrable 36 chambers, I still enjoy...

Pretending to Guess Where my Phone is Giving Me Cancer- wait, no, hold on...

Listening as the Ring Tones I Once Didn't Mind Get More and More Grating with Each Passing Day- er, I mean...

Sitting with my Phone Under my Balls so that When it Vibrates it Scares the Living Shit Out of Me- Better, but still not quite...

Trying to Figure Out How to Capitalize Lengthy Title Lines? Fuck it, good enough.

Wibbley-Wobbly Timey-Wimey

The other night I had the opportunity to help out/be an active nuisance at an "Adult Prom" themed party. I don't mean that it was XXX-style "adult" but rather that it was just a prom for adults. So a prom with booze. Or rather, a prom where the booze isn't hidden. It was staffed by some terrific people, but a few of the attendees got me thinking about how much I fucking hate...

Nostalgia- Nostalgia is one of the most subtle and deadly poisons our fragile, human minds are susceptible to. I like to think that it's only natural to daydream about our pasts. We've all done things we're proud of, things we're ashamed of, and things we can't stop laughing about when we tell others. These are usually the best times we have. And it's great to be able to look back fondly on them. But the fact is, throughout our lives, these times are often few and far between. I'm not trying to talk shit on life here, I'm just saying that our memories do a lot of selective editing when we decide what we want to remember. So it becomes easy to feel nostalgic for the past, to start thinking about what awesome times you used to have. From there, the problem is, it's only a short jump to being discontent with your present. And from there it's only another small step to doing things you probably shouldn't. Like showing up to a prom-themed party in your daughter's dress so that the entire crowd can see your leather handbag-style cleavage and looking legitimately disappointed when you don't win Prom Queen (again). And, in related news, that's why the song "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen can go fuck itself.

But, like all good double-edged swords, I still kind of enjoy...

Nostalgia- Who among us hasn't creamed their pants when they remember some cherished childhood toy for the first time in 10-20 years? Or sang along asininely to a favorite old song? Or sat around late at night with friends talking about all the stupid shit you used to get into? No one worth knowing, that's for sure. I'll be the first to admit that I get as caught up in the past as anyone else. I just hope that everything I do worth remembering eventually amounts to some sort of payoff. Maybe if, when I die, I could get a little montage of any dangerous driving, sex, and peeing on churches that I've done all set to, say, "Ace of Spades," then I could expire happily. Even more happily if that montage could then somehow be burned to DVD and sent to my friends and family. I hope you guys like partial nudity.

A Sad Day for Hate

This holiday kind of seems to stand as the antithesis for everything that comprises me, namely my ability to piss and moan about meaningless garbage. I want to try and get back into this, but after spending a nice day with my family it's hard to find the rage, buried as it is beneath so much food and slothfulness. So let's all give thanks and be happy and shit. I promise this thing'll be up and kicking again soon with at least a medium level of vigor. Here's a picture of cats being nice to each other and getting into the holiday spirit.

I understand I've been lazy about writing on here lately. If you're bored, I invite you to read my other garbage. That ought to cover me for all of five to ten minutes.

A Brave New World

Movies are art. Art imitates life. Life is complicated. It stands to reason, then, that movies are complicated. This is not conjecture, it is scientific fact. It irks me when people think movies are just about mindless entertainment; they aren't. They are, in a sense, a hyper-realistic mirror, allowing us to view our lives from an outside perspective for what they really are: a series of hilariously timed, usually vulgar, and ultimately depressing string of events. That's why I fucking hate...

The Gross Over-Simplification of Films- In today's example, I'll be covering the shock/gross-out horror film of the year, The Human Centipede. For all the hype that surrounds this movie no one seems to be focusing on anything deeper than the shit-eating. Now, I'm not here to tell you that people don't forcibly eat shit in this movie; I just think the film as a whole goes so much deeper than that.

See, horror films are a type of coping mechanism. They allow us to address our deepest, most unsettling fears in scenarios with no actual impact on our own lives. This approach allows us to distance ourselves from our concerns, thus enabling us to consider them more objectively. In this particular example, it means the difference between having to think about forced fecal ingestion at a distance as opposed to having a plate of poop dropped in front of you and a gun put to your head. But these seemingly specific concerns often betray deeper, more subtle fears.

After the advent of nuclear weapons in our society, for example, we saw a new wave of movies about radioactive monsters. People weren't actually afraid of radioactive monsters (although they should have been), they were just scared of nuclear weapons. Radioactive monsters just happened to be a fun manifestation of that fear. The Hunan Centipede, then, isn't really about how afraid we all are of eating poop; it's a movie about science run amok. Medicine without morals. The crazy, Nazi-type doctor is really just a big metaphor for genetic experimentation, or stem-cell research, or abortion or something. He's not just about scat fetishism. Now just to be clear, does this mean that I feel that stem-cell research, abortion, and medical advancement are a threat to our society? Fuck no. But then again, I don't stay up at night having nightmares about shit either.

So for how worked up people get about some icky red and brown bits, I do have to say that I love...

Missing the Fucking Point Completely- Did anyone ever stop to consider that the concept of a "human centipede" isn't even half as terrifying as a real centipede? I don't care how many screaming Asian men and trashy white bitches you stitch together, it will never be as horrifying as the real thing. Oh sure, I've heard people try to tell me that the common centipede is actually quite beneficial to humans. "They eat other bugs!" people keep shouting at me as I stomp them out of existence with a prejudice rarely seen outside of gang warfare. I don't give a shit. They're gross, they're fast, they're poisonous (even if the smaller ones can't pierce human skin), and goddammit, they're up to something. Something sinister. Would it be too much to assume that they could be learning from our own propaganda and reverse-engineering it into something even worse: THE CENTIPEDE HUMAN? I don't think so. So everybody calm down about feces and Nazi-doctors and focus on the real problem: bugs living among us as people. Please feel free to suspect your loved ones.

A Day or Three Late, Zero Bucks Short

In an appalling display of procrastination, here is the final summation of the greatest zombie-themed media available, originally intended to be posted back on Halloween. Just buy yourself a couple fun-sized candy bars you don't really like and pretend like the holiday never ended.

Best zombie movie:

28 Days Later- I've heard people piss and moan about how these aren't really "zombies." They run instead of shuffling. They retain some limited sense of human logic. They never fully die before turning. To all those nay-sayers who argue that this disqualifies Danny Boyle's gory masterpiece from being considered a "zombie film" I have an efficient, succinct counter-argument: shut up. The first time I saw it, 28 Days Later sent chills up my spine like any zombie film before or since has managed to do. The concept of the running horde is over one million percent scarier than a shambling crowd that you can escape with a brisk walk. Not to mention the cinematography and soundtrack to the film are fantastic as well. I will always be terrified of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and now for more reasons than just being labeled a pretentious douche if people found out I listened to them.

Best zombie comedy:

Shaun of the Dead- With Zombieland as a close runner-up, I have to give victory to Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright's masterpiece. SotD is a solidly gory zombie adventure about a crew of deadbeat adults struggling for survival and learning a bit about the world, friendship, and themselves along the way. Actually no, it's more of just a solid comedy about those things that just happens to involve zombies. Hollywood take note: zombies can actually help mend our broken hearts as well as tearing them out of our chests.

Best zombie book:

The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks- This may seem like a shoe-in but it still deserves a mention. The Zombie Survival Guide is funny, informative, detailed, and easily accessible even to those who had never considered the merits of the crowbar in a zombie apocalypse (you weirdos). In his work, Brooks has touched the minds and hearts of millions. When I initially started bothering my friends about this topic, sensible zombie-warrior Matty Warbucks reminded about this gem. I'm assuming a lot of people have already read it, but if you haven't please go pick up a copy now so that you too can start annoying the shit out of your friends with hypothetical arguments over bicycles, fire axes and sniper rifles.

Best zombie video-games:

Left 4 Dead 1 & 2- The good people at Valve have a direct line into my heart. I don't know when or how they found it, but it seems to be made out of gory murder and sassy one-liners. When I eventually stopped playing their other gem, Team Fortress 2, long enough to breathe they suckered me into the Left 4 Dead series. Long story short, you play as one of four survivors of a zombie outbreak traveling together, fighting to reach a series of safe spots. Your characters all have separate and unique back-stories that you never fully know but get to glimpse through their dialogue with one another. This helps endear particular characters to particular people (except for Louis, who no one should like) and makes it all the more tragic when you watch them start to get ripped to shreds in front of you. Not only that, but the zombies are spawned randomly in accordance to how well you're playing. If you start out a little shaky, the games seem to take pity and lighten up how many undead rush you at once. If you begin to smash skulls, prepare to get smashed in return. Overall they are a pair of games so ambient, fun and well-balanced that they stand as an affront to God himself. Buy them now.

CONSUMER WHORE

Continuing the Halloween zombie ball, I've compiled a short smattering of undead-themed media that you should go purchase and consume immediately. Suck it up.

Games

The Resident Evil Series- If you didn't grow up with these games you owe it to yourself to at least pick up the first one, play through it, and immediately not understand what all the fuss was about.

Eternal Darkness- Probably the only Gamecube game I ever played, it turned out to be a not-half-bad horror/adventure hybrid that wasn't strictly about zombies per say, but was somewhat hard, somewhat creepy, and contained shambling, shuffling monsters.

Dead Rising- Frank Genericlastname is an up-and-coming reporter who is the only one who can, through a series of timed missions and insanely hard boss-fights, expose a mysterious government cover-up somehow involving cows. More importantly, it's a mall filled with thousands of zombies and an assortment of destructive implements ranging from lawn mower to soccer balls.

Movies

The Evil Dead Trilogy- Bruce Campbell is a god among men. Things just won't stay dead. Somewhere along the line, a girl is raped by a tree. Hilarity ensues.

George Romero's '... of the Dead' series- Including Night of the Living (for historical purposes if nothing else), Dawn (old and new, but especially new), Land (it really wasn't that bad), Diary (it was that bad, but watch it anyway), and Day. But only the old version of Day with the underground military base, not the new one with Nick Cannon. Fuck you, Nick Cannon.

Quarantine- Characters you don't care about are locked in a tight apartment building with people and animals infected with an unnaturally violent form of rabies. Growling and teeth-gnashing follow. Worth your time if you can find it cheap. Legend has it that the original Spanish version, [rec], is even better.

Yes I totally left a lot of shit off this list. Some of it was on purpose for tomorrows compiling of what I would consider the best zombie media. Some of it I legitimately forgot or don't know about. Please make additions for the good of us all. Education is our best defense.

The Walking Bread

So I asked people for a few sentences to tell me why they loved zombies so goddamn much. Intellectual wanker and card-carrying Communist Deane McFury wrote me a whole essay. Showoff.

"The horror genre has a long list of proverbial antagonists that drive the plot. Most of the time these creatures are derived from either the demonic “bat out of hell” sort of thing or the omnipotent slasher, always one step ahead of the girl with huge tits until she sticks it out to destroy him for good (or until the sequel). For the most part, the Zombie genre stays away from those stereotypes to deliver something deeper than a teenager fucked with a two-foot blade. To throw my two cents into the ring, I would like to defend George Romero’s Living Dead films and the work of Robert Kirkman in the Walking Dead series.

What makes a zombie scary? They are dumb, slow, seemingly without feeling, and easily toppled over by an awkward push. The basic walking ghoul cast in the Romero’s Night of the Living Dead set the precedence that would not be broken until Zach Snyder’s remake of Dawn of the Dead in 2004, where the lumbers turned into banshees filled with piss and vinegar. So big fucking deal about zombies. They have no supernatural bag of tricks they can delve into and no skull-fucking retard strength that can break spines. At the same time, once large groups of them amass, there is some serious shit going down. Therefore, the decisive reason why the traditional zombie is scary as all hell lies within their vast and overwhelming numbers. However, isn’t this what also makes people so scary?

Romero’s films transcend the usual gambit of T&A blood baths because of their socially conscious messages. In Night of the Living Dead Romero takes a stance against a few issues like racism, the Vietnam War, and nuclear-age social values. Romero continues the trend of hidden social consciousness throughout his series of films. However, the agenda that Romero sneaks in is the mere backdrop to the more interesting device driving the undead. The progression of the zombified world shows the breakdown of society and resurgence of an unforgiving “fuck you” attitude that people develop to survive. While all of this is going down, zombies start to regain control of the living world in a type of reincarnation. Over the series, the zombies reclaim parts their humanity in the films. Probably one of the least well received of the Romero zombie flicks is the Land of the Dead. However, no other film in the series delivers this message so well. As the zombies attempt to rise up and reclaim what they have lost, the humans latch onto the old norms of society and slowly degrade into animalistic survival. This gradual effect of the humanizing of the undead and the dehumanizing of the living shows surprising qualities that the capitalistic endeavors of society will lead to its ultimate demise when people do not work together for a common goal. If that common goal is to rip out someone’s intestines, or overthrow an existing government, the power lies within numbers. But as the status quo shifts, we are left wondering where the power lies in the end. With the “Zombie Triumph” scenario, society becomes truly classless. As everyone develops into to their new lives, there is no need for a social hierarchy. They will do what they love doing until they decay and rot into the ground.

The undead rising up to reclaim their lost lives develops the non-living concept of unity that the living realm lacks throughout the World of Z. Some of the most interesting scenarios come directly from the human condition and the efforts to keep from reverting into a lawless society. It is strange to think that in most stories dealing with zombies, the usual concept of survival depends on self-reliance over the group dynamic. This can be a saving grace, but it usually does not fare well for those who go at it alone. If the zombies are so frightening in a large mass, why are large groupings of humans so inefficient in these stories?

In The Walking Dead written by Robert Kirkman the true story revolves around the concept of human survival as they live in the world of the dead. Zombies are a mere backdrop to the human drama that unfolds. Everything about this comic I have fallen madly in love with, from the characters’ importance to their expendability in the grand scheme of things. Everyone’s stories are developed in the new world, but the back-stories remain a weaker part of the graphic novel. Everyone prays for things to revert to the way they were, yet they know their lives are never coming back. By the end of the first book, protagonist Rick leads the rag tag group of survivors on the road that provides the turning point of realization over reversion. I have yet to find an author like Kirkman who takes a single group of characters and stresses their flaws until the breaking point of their very humanity. Survival tales are often interesting because of the attraction to something out of the norm. If that is the case, zombie stories are interesting enough to captivate any audience. The Walking Dead delivers a unique perspective on the “Zombie” genre that I hope will inspire more people to write on the topic. Gore is good, but when coupled with great writing, it can advance the horror genre into something more than B-flick status and gain artistic credibility.

I am extremely excited for the new Walking Dead series that AMC has picked up. The graphic novel is probably one of my favorite stories of all time. However, I am also realistic about how much artistic interpretation can differ between mediums. Going from paper to screen can prove tricky and I do not think the series could have justice done to it from a feature film. At the same time, is a basic cable channel the best place for a story this deep? In the end, I would have loved to see the series on a premium channel like HBO or Showtime but the real world isn’t perfect and neither is the land of the dead. I, for one, do not watch TV, but the trailers look promising enough to get me to brush off the cablebox and plug the bastard in for an emotional roller coaster punctuated by ripping flesh and rotting faces."

Halloweenis

Halloween is a pretty fun holiday, all things considered. Kids go out and extort candy from adults under threat of damaging property. Adults go out and extort sex from each other under threat of continuing to wear horrible costumes. Everyone gets drunk off of something, either sugar of alcohol. Sure, it's commercialized, but what good holiday isn't? Still, if you ask me, ghosts and goblins are fucking boring. The real money-shot of horror is zombies.

Zombies are, unfortunately for my pseudo-hipster upbringing, somewhat en vogue right now. By which I mean they are fashionable, and not that the band En Vogue has risen from the dead (because why would I ever complain about that?). Movies, video games, t-shirts, and even Hellogoodbye seem to all be painfully aware that putting pirates, ninjas, and zombies onto anything will automatically sell it to greasy teens. This is really kind of a shame, because any time something becomes a cash-cow the market inevitably becomes over-saturated with low-end garbage themed around cashing in quickly. For example, when studio executives realized that Pixar's animated garbage was the new Disney cartoon they descended on the genre so fast that their digital, 3-D cutsey crap could blot out the sun. And sometimes I worry that the zombie theme is suffering from the same corporate bloat.

So, in honor of Halloween, I decided to put hate aside for a little bit and invited some friends to tell me what zombie shit they loved and why. I think it will be a soulful journey during which we get to know both the monsters we love, and ourselves, a little bit better along the way. To get things started off, long-standing friend of Hate/Nothate, Monseigneur Timecat, wrote this little ditty about why reanimated flesh gets him hard:

"I don’t know what it is about Zombies that I find interesting and cool. Maybe its the danger, action, and chicks who realize you’re the last guy on Earth, like in Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland. There’s something about films like these that make me just want to bitch-slap every person in the room to keep them quite while I’m wathin’ ma’ (zombie) stories.

I even admit that I find the idea of a small zombie outbreak in my area appealing. Who doesn’t think it would be fun to shoot some of the horrible monsters that live on your
street, zombies or not? As I’ve been thinking about it, that seems to be the one reason that I, like many other people around the world, am so fascinated by zombies in our culture. Just like any other action movie, they give you a great starting point for creating your own revenge fantasies for your stupid boss, whore-ex, etc… except, when you kill someone and they’re a zombie, you don’t go to jail for the rest of your life."

But I think that excuses to kill your neighbors is only part of the picture. So over the next few days I would like to try and really examine why zombies are the coolest fucking things under the sun. I would also like to try and get a working list of the cream of the slowly decaying crop in terms of zombie media, be it in book, film, or video game format. I hope that you will all join me in this touching journey into our hearts. I encourage my entire single-digit audience to break their longstanding feedback strike and comment away on this. As much as I admire your vows of silence I would love to get a serious discussion going. So read along and jump in. Critics are already calling it "the feel-good hit of the summer," which is impressive because it is currently Fall. And I promise, I will try to keep the zombie-related puns to a minimum, with emphasis on the word "try."

In Soviet Pennsylvania, Road Drives on You!

I always thought basic things like road etiquette were so trivial and well-known that they didn't really have to fit into the scope of this blog. Actually, no I didn't. You all drive like fucking assholes, and I'm going to write about it. Again.


THE LEFT-HAND LANE IS FOR PASSING, YOU HORSE'S ASS- It is not for checking out the scenery. It is not for swerving into in order to try and get around someone making a right-hand turn. It is not for talking on your phone if you cannot press the gas at the same time. It is not for being too fucking old and dusty to operate a horseless carriage. It is not for doing the exact same speed as the car next to you. It is not even for doing only one or two miles faster than the car next to you. It is never, ever under any circumstances for doing anything lower than the posted speed limit. The only times it is ever acceptable to do anything lower than 900 mph in the left-hand lane is if you are either slowing down to make a turn or literally dying behind the wheel. If you want to take a leisurely drive there is a perfectly nice lane on the right side of the road, and if you promise to stay in it I promise not to tail-gate you and say vulgar things about various women and children who are important to you. And speaking of lanes of traffic...

THERE ARE LINES ON THE ROAD FOR A FUCKING REASON- You are supposed to drive between them, not over top of them. It doesn't matter if you're the shitheaded middle-aged white man in the Mini with the custom tags and racing stripes or the shitheaded middle-aged white man in the giant fucking Hummer, you're not supposed to straddle the line between two lanes of traffic just because you're indecisive about which one to be in. And if your car is too big to fit in one lane, cut some of it off. Even if you are a woman, your penis literally cannot, medically speaking, be small enough to justify having to drive a car that large and obnoxious. And furthermore...

THERE ARE TURN SIGNALS ON YOUR CAR FOR A FUCKING REASON- I know you already know which direction you're planning to careen off in, but that's not why turn signals were invented. They were created to let the rest of us know to get the fuck out of your way because you don't know how to fucking drive and are thinking about driving any direction except straight ahead. They are also simple and easy to use, requiring, at most, an extension of a finger and a flick of the wrist. There are absolutely no good reasons not to use them, except as acts of open aggression towards everyone else on the road. In which case I consider you fair game and will proceed to drive directly into you if your car is worth more than mine. The only good reason to not use a turn signal, I guess, is if you only have one arm, or no arms, in which case I don't know how you're driving but I'm no longer mad, I'm just impressed. But you could still try to use a knee or something. And finally...

BEING IN A STATE YOU DON'T LIVE IN IS NOT AN EXCUSE TO DRIVE LIKE A FUCKING IDIOT- I'm looking at you, Delaware.


In conclusion, I fucking hate everyone who owns a car, myself included. Driving licenses should only be given to people who can pass grueling, multi-year mental examinations. The exams should be so difficult that I know that I would never pass myself, but I'm not worried, because the satisfaction of knowing that the rest of you assholes are off the road will be enough to keep me warm on the long, cold nights we will surely have after the collapse of most of civilization as we know it.

Swiftie-Boat Kids for Truth

I can't believe I'm even going to say this, so I'm only going to say it once: Kanye was right. Taylor Swift is overrated. It's not that she's particularly horrible, as far as standard pop-country garbage goes. It's more that I feel like I'm missing something. Like everyone else knows something awesome about her that I don't. Like she's some sort of new designer drug that I don't know how to take. And with 12-year-old fans petitioning to be allowed to skip school to listen to her new CD, it's made me realize something: I fucking hate her. But in particular, I fucking hate...

"You Belong With Me-" Let's just, for one second, set aside the fact that T-Swift seems stuck on trying to convince us that she's some sort of ugly, high school misfit instead of a tall, blond stereotype. Instead, let's focus on the fact that this song is really fucking creepy. It's basically a three minute exploration of stalking that would make Sting uncomfortable. For those of you who are lucky enough to never have encountered the song and don't feel like listening to it, it revolves around Ms. Swift babbling on and on about how your girlfriend will never understand you like she does. In spite of the fact that you chose to go out with your girlfriend instead of her, you really belong with Taylor, and she's going to make sure the two of you wind up together by any means necessary.

She starts the song explaining that you, apparently, will not date her because she wears t-shirts. From there she informs you that your girlfriend is a total bitch who will never understand you like she does and proceeds to lap into some sort of coma where her eyes roll back into her head and she masturbates to the thought of you being emotionally beaten and shattered to the point that, in a desperate search for meaning, you drive to her house in the middle of the night, kick her door down, and the two of you tear off your clothes and understand the living shit out of each other. Which is all very well and good, as far as sappy high school masturbatory aids go, except for the fact that Taylor Swift just wrote a song calling my girlfriend a bitch, and I'm fairly certain they've never even met. From here I would like to point out that if this song were performed by anyone more threatening than a tiny white girl they would almost certainly be arrested on the spot and preemptively charged with kidnapping, attempted rape, and improper use of a romantic hook in expression of creepy fetishes.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that just in case there are any moms of teenage girls reading this blog (and god help you if there are) you should definitely not let your daughters skip school to get the new Taylor Swift CD because I heard that in the insert there are detailed diagrams of how to tie someone to a chair, along with weight-to-dose calculation tables for Rohypnol.

Which isn't to say that all songs about the expression of love through kidnap and murder are bad, because I fucking love...

"Saturday Night-" In this traditional, and far less creepy, love ballad, radio-friendly folk-heroes The Misfits explain that there are 52 ways to murder anyone. They don't give you any specifics, but the song strongly implies that they've tried them all out, and they all work pretty well because the girl always seems to wind up dead. You might not think this is all that romantic, until you learn that they no longer even enjoy the screams of dying maidens because they really miss you, and all the little things you used to do, like smoke cigarettes. Really, it was pretty selfish of you to go and die when they murdered you, because they're just a bunch of lonely romantics at heart. Their Saturday-night murder sprees don't even sound fun any more because they're all just so bummed out that you're not around to shine a little light into their cold, dark souls. I mean don't get me wrong, these guys are gonna keep killing ladies because they understand a thing or two about commitment and taking pride in their work, but they're not going to enjoy it any more, and I really think that even Nifty-Swifty would agree that that's the most romantic thing ever.

Whistle While You Die A Little Inside

Work sucks. According to 95% of official scientists, if work were supposed to be fun it would be called "fun" and not "work." Thank god local radio superheros B101 (101.butts fm in the greater Philadelphia area!) are here to lighten the mood! B101 is, apparently, the only fucking radio station that can legally be played within 500 feet of an office, but it's okay because their station has been chemically designed to make you feel good. It says so right on their home page. And that's why I fucking hate them. Because very little bothers me more than...

Bossy fucking radio DJs constantly telling me what to do- Being as I sit directly next to the only radio speaker in the entire office while shitting my pants over data entry, I have plenty of time to carefully and painstakingly analyze everything that B101's faceless song-pushers say to me, personally, between music and commercial breaks. The one thing that has stuck with me more than any other theme they harp on is that they want me to "just feel good" with a fervent intensity usually only found in drug dealers and sex industry workers. I have yet to figure out how listening to "Sexual Healing" and Jimmy Buffet while surrounded by awkward 40-somethings is supposed to make me feel good, but fuck if B101 isn't gonna keep trying until it works.

I'm not even terribly upset that the station doesn't make me "feel good" on a regular basis. I never expected the radio to have such wonderful, prescription-strength consequences. I'm more cheesed off that B101 has the fucking nerve to tell me how to feel. What if I want to feel sad at work? I'm still getting my job done, and last time I checked this is still AMERICA, where I have the right to slit my wrists all over accounting documents so long as no one gets hurt. The fact that these uppity, white-bread sound-pimps feel the need to bombard me with total crap for 8 hours a day is horrid. When they get presumptuous enough to comment on my day and how I'm certainly depressed but desperately need to feel better makes me angry. Angry and a little uncomfortable. Stopping songs to tell me how they sympathize with me sitting at my desk and how they know that I'm totally looking forward to lunch seems weirdly personal. And for your information B101, if that is your real name, I usually pack myself leftover shit sandwiches for lunch and only look forward to it because it's an hour out of my day that I can spend sitting in my car not listening to your fucking radio station.

Which makes me all the more ashamed to admit that...

There are two songs on this godforsaken station that I kind of like- The first being "Faith" by George Michael and the second being "Don't You Want Me" by The Human League. I'm not going to try justifying why these songs are awesome. It's not that I can't justify it, it's just that I feel like it should be so self-explanatory that if you don't understand their god-tier status then it's not even worth my time getting into it. The reason I'm so thrilled that The "Bee" keeps playing them, however, is two-fold:

1) It gives me roughly 6 minutes of music each day that I can actually enjoy singing along to, and

2) I'm fairly certain that my knowing all the words to both makes my coworkers uncomfortably question my sexuality.

So to whoever the flaming queen that keep slipping pseudo-gay 80s pop in between the Taylor Swift, Daughtry, and Lady Anti-Valium, please keep up the good work. You are my only ray of hope in this brave new radio world of musical Soma that I seem to have inadvertently stepped into.

Bachman-Turner Overtype

According to official internet resource office.microsoft.fart, Overtype mode allows you to "edit text" by typing "new characters over the existing characters." According to shoddy internet writer Me, it allows you to "fucking ruin everything you've been working on" by "screwing up the type and formatting of something you had already set how you liked it." In other words, if you set your cursor in front of a word and start typing, it deletes the word one letter at a time rather than just inserting the new type before it. In other other words, I fucking hate it.

A short, explanatory dialogue inspired by "true events"
Soulless Computer Voice:"Oh hey! It looks likes you're trying to edit something that you previously put a lot of time and effort in to, like say, a resume!"

Me: "I, er... yeah, I am. How did you learn to speak?"

SCV: "I know it looks like you're simply trying to update the 'Work Experience' section of that resume, but wouldn't you rather I start deleting things at random every time you press one key, effectively ruining the size, formatting, and content of this document and irreparably damaging your chances of getting this job/promotion?"

Me: "Oh god, no. Why would I ever want you to do that?"

SCV: "Did you say, 'do that?'"

At this point in the dialogue the computer goes ahead and enables Overtype mode, proper-fucking my entire resume as I try to add just one more job to it. The dialogue itself ceases as I proceed to cry like a schoolgirl while flames creep eerily up the monitor in front of me. An increasingly loud, mechanical laugh starts to echo from the speakers. I don't get the job. Twenty years down the line, I am a burnt-out junkie living on the streets and trying to sell bottles of my own fatally discolored urine as "lemonade." It goes without saying that I have no teeth left. On one particularly cold and rainy night, a limousine slows to a stop in front of me as I sit on a desolate stretch of sidewalk, fighting the shakes. The tinted window rolls down to reveal my old computer in the back seat, fabulously wealthy and surrounded by a writhing mass of beautiful, naked people, bottles of alcohol, and gold bullion.

"Hard luck, old chap," it says to me, having somewhere along the line downloaded itself a British accent, "maybe you should have worked a little harder on that resume!" The limousine peels out, splashing icy, dirty water all over my face and in my mouth, which had been hanging slack with rage ever since I saw the computer. The machine's faux-English cackling echoes and a champagne flute flies out the window, shattering on the sidewalk as it peels around a corner and out of my life forever. And that's why I fucking hate "overtype mode."

But I guess if I had to pick something, I kind of like...

Autosave- I really had to search the farthest recesses of my imagination to find something I like about Microsoft Office, and all I came up with was the autosave feature that seems to sort of sometimes work whenever it fucking feels like it. I have to give it props because on a small handful of occasions during college it did save me from having to retype an entire paper when my laptop crashed, but really I could probably count the number of times it worked correctly on one hand. From my experience, I'm better off writing papers in this Blogger word pad because that at least thinks to back up my work any time I stop typing just long enough to stick my finger up my nose.

Mash-Up Potatoes

What's better than listening to a good song? How about listening to two good songs at once? Mash-ups are a fantastic fucking idea and I don't care what anyone says. They carry the potential to take the best parts of multiple songs, good or bad, and cobble them together into some sort of bastardized uber-song that flies in the face of God itself. And that is why I fucking love them. Today's abominably awesome remix is...

The Hood Internet- I'm A Flirt (Shoreline)- I know this one isn't really all that new, iTunes has randomly brought it back to my attention and I felt like dissecting its greatness, so bear with me. From what little I know about him, R. Kelly is not a complicated man. He urinates questionably. He spends a lot of time trying to free himself from storage spaces. And, according to this song, he-a flirt. Depending on how you want to interpret it I suppose you could argue that he is either labeling himself a flirt or promising to do some serious flirting. Either way, the message is the same: do not bring your girl around Mr. Kelly. Cause he-a flirt. Say what you will about the man, he is honest. He even brought his friend T-Pain along to try and help convince you that, really, you should not introduce them to any lady you care about. I know, I know, it seems like such a good idea in principle, but they-a flirt. Hell, they might even holla at her. And then where would you be? Probably not with your girlfriend any longer if this song is any indication. But I mean really, it'd be your own dumb-ass fault, because they tried to warn you.

Mash-up gurus The Hood Internet have even tried to help by adding music from Broken Social Scene's 7/4 (Shoreline), a pretty awesome song in its own right. I can only assume that The Hood Internet figured that by adding some BSS to the mix the song might reach wider, more indie-inclined audiences, thus making everyone aware of Kelly's serious medical condition of being a-flirt. The end result of all this song-fuckery is an off-kilter R&B public service announcement being magically transformed into an indie-dance masterpiece, finally liberating Kelly's music from the realm of people with rhythm deficiencies and inner-ear infections to the public at large, allowing everyone to know just how dangerous of a-flirt he really is.

But at the same time, not all mash-ups are automatic gold. For example, I still fucking hate...

Cheap Cologne's Double Black Album- I tried to find a song off of this musical abortion on YouTube, but after two different searches there weren't any available and I really didn't feel that it was worth any more of my time. The Double Black Album is Jay-Z's Black Album remixed with Metallica's Black Album (GET IT?!?). It's not that Cheap Cologne shouldn't get a few points for originality, and it's not like they didn't pull off this project with a certain degree of competence. The real problem I have with The Double Black Album is that at this moment in internet history remixes of Mr. Z's Black Album have become so common that regardless of your musical inclinations there are better options out there. If you're hankering for quality, there's Danger Mouse's classic Grey Album, remixing Sir Z with The Beatles' White Album. I might be partial to this simply because it's one of the first remix albums I ever came across as an oily-faced school-boy, but I also firmly believe it's the best remix of The Black Album done to date. If you're more of a pretentious twat, there's also DJ N-Wee's The Slack Album, remixing Jayz with Pavement to create something that I've honestly never felt the urge to listen to all the way through but that I still applaud just for the sheer concept of it. And you know, there's probably like a thousand other Jay-Z remixes out there, but at some point, specifically after listening to 38 different mash-ups featuring him, I realized that I don't even really like Jay-Z enough to get Pokemon fever over this and feel like I gotta catch 'em all. I guess what I'm saying is that while mash-ups are a great idea, not all of them are necessary, and The Double Black Album is, unfortunately, good evidence to this very fact.

Soap-Box: ACTIVATE!

I fucking hate...

The casual and derogatory use of the words "gay" and "fag"- In our culture, ideas are shaped through words and terminology. In order to understand something, we first have to be able to label it. The label we apply to a person, place, or thing shapes how we see it, framing it with all the connotations that word carries with it. Think of the example that has been brought up in recent years that a person waging war against an oppressive government can either be a "freedom fighter" or a "terrorist" depending on which side of their gun you're on. It is in this same manner that we come to label and understand homosexuals in our society. The word "faggot" carries with it oodles of negative connotation, and by applying it to gay culture we automatically frame it as something worthy of our derision. The word "gay" doesn't necessarily carry the same negative tone (it originally meant "happy," and that's nice and all) but dammit if we're not doing everything we can to give it one. Every time some angsty twelve-year-old calls a friend/parent/homework assignment/tv show/whatthefuckever "gay" in order to express displeasure with it the word "gay" is given a gentle little push away from being a relatively neutral word to one loaded with as much negative connotations as "fag." Now, seeing as gay culture is already barely tolerated in our society as is (hint: saying "I'm okay with gay people as long as they keep it to themselves" does not actually mean that you're okay with gay people), I really don't think it needs the added stress of having its existing labels turned into slurs. This is why every person, be they fat twelve year old or ignorant 20-30-something, that uses the word "gay" as a slur, or the word "fag" to refer to anything other than a British cigarette, makes me want to show them what a real hate-crime is.

Related only through talk of homosexuality, I fucking love...

Mondo Guerra- Say what you will about his bowties and short-shorts, this man has the biggest balls in the world for finding the courage to come out as HIV-positive on national television. There are special places in heaven reserved for people who refuse to hide who they are, people who refuse to let something negative define them, and people who are able to harness tragic events and refine them into works of art. As he has proven himself able to do all three, Mr. Guerra probably has a golden chair with his name on it right next to Jesus so that the two of them can sit in the early evening sunlight (it's always dusk in heaven) and talk about suspenders and Jerry curls.

America the Booty-full

Today, close personal friend and part-time lover M. Timecat and I explore the many facets of our patriotic sides.

I, for one, fucking hate...

American Currency- Old American currency was boring. While the collective monies of every other country on Earth were getting dolled up in their finest blues and pinks and purples, American money was dressing itself in the same drab greens, burying its fun side so deep in the closet that it took us until recent years to see even a splash of color. But I'm not here to harp half-assedly on paper currency. No friends, I'm here to harp spectacularly on the 1971-1978 Eisenhower dollar coin, pictured left. I have no problem with Eisenhower himself. Buttons from the time of his term as president (1492-1500AD) proclaim "I LIKE IKE!" and if people liked the man enough to make buttons about him then certainly he has every right to be on the front of a coin. But what's that on the back of the coin you ask? It's a bald eagle, flying with a sprig of some sort of plant, on the moon. This is significant because EAGLES CANNOT FLY ON THE FUCKING MOON. There is no atmosphere on the moon for them to flap their wings against. Furthermore, without the previously mentioned atmosphere, eagles (like their distant cousin, man) cannot fucking breathe. Without atmosphere, the eagle's eyes would explode out of its very head like a bloody space-firecracker. Also, without any Atmosphere CDs, the eagle has no hope of throwing a decent party. According to internet witchdoctor and general know-it-all, Wikipedia, the design is the insignia of the Apollo 11 mission and was designed by some dude named Frank Gasparro. I don't know Mr. Gasparro personally, but his name does sound like a digestive disorder and I'm going to put my foot down and say that he has absolutely no business getting anywhere near our money again.

Timecat, on the other hand, fucking loves...

American Psycho- "Movie = good. Book= best book ever? Back when I was a young warthog, I was wonderfully traumatized by the gratuitous sex and violence that occurs in the fictional life of seemingly normal guy, Pat Bateman. You know you never saw a movie where a guy bites off a chick’s snatch then drops a chainsaw down a stairwell on a hooker before this one, and you probably never will again. Then my eyes were opened to dangerously unsafe levels when I realized that this cinematic masterpiece was actually a novel, written by supercreep Bret Easton Ellis. I must compliment Mr. Ellis because to this day I do not think I have read a better written book, but I hope I never run into him in an alley late at night, because any guy who can think up a chapter where the main character sports the decapitated head of a woman on his cock while killing is not invited to tea time with me and Grand Ma-Ma. However, kudos are in order because with the incredible attention to detail and the ability to bring to life what I imagine is a spot-on rendition of the mind of a psychopath from the inside out, it is obvious that Ellis is a very talented writer. So with that being said, shine on Bret Easton Ellis, you blood-and-gore-covered diamond!"

Droppin' Plot Points Like Galileo Dropped the Orange

I fucking love...

Completely ridiculous movies- Today's installment being District B-13. The French action film that everyone only knows as "that stupid parkour movie" just recently got a sequel made about it. Or rather, I just recently found out someone made a sequel to this movie, so that's as good to me as it just being made. It's hard to imagine what was left to cover in a sequel, as this movie seemingly has it all. A "low-life" character with a heart of gold? Check. A large, evil gang? Check. A tough-as-nails cop who only works alone but suddenly finds himself with a partner? Check. A nuclear warhead? Check. Running and jumping on stuff that should neither be run nor jumped upon? That's a big check. A fucking huge dude who must be defeated by using brains rather than brawn? Check. A "sexy" girl who must be rescued? Check. A government conspiracy? You'll just have to watch and find out! Oh who the hell are we kidding, check, of course. There's no point in hiding the ending, I just summed up the entire rest of the plot for you. This futuristic masterpiece is set in a place and time wildly far from now (Paris, 2010) where crime is so bad that blah blah blah the government tries to blow up all the poor people. Somewhere along the line someone makes a reference to the Holocaust (while choking someone else out over the side of a building) and we all go "ooooooh shit!" and narrowly avoid a massive nuclear blast which, for some reason, would only kill the poor people and not, you know, the entire city of Paris itself. Also, while that's going on, one guy's sister is kidnapped for six months, fed heroin like babies are fed formula, and then manages to be perky and alert a few days after her rescue rather than vomiting and sweating profusely from all the MASSIVE HEROIN WITHDRAWAL she should be going through. And yet, in the midst of all this, the hardest thing to believe in this entire movie is the fact that there should be such a ready supply of nicely kept, high-end sports cars available in a walled-off barrio where every building, inhabited or not, is literally missing at least one wall. I forget where I was even going with this post because my mind is numbed by the sheer absurdity of the entire scenario. And yet, at the same time, I own this film and fucking love watching it. And you should too. Watch it that is; I wouldn't really encourage anyone to buy this thing per say. Just make sure you have a glass of water handy so that you can do spit-takes every five seconds when you find yourself saying, "Surely this cannot get any dumber!" and the movie yells back at you, "YES IT FUCKING CAN!"

But I still fucking hate...

Completely terrible movies- Today's installment being 500 Days of Summer. I actually can't say that this movie is completely terrible, I do think it was shot and edited and acted out very well, but someone brought it up this weekend and it made all the bile rise in my throat like I had forgotten a film could. For everything this movie does right, I still found myself constantly amazed by how much I hated both of the main characters. "Sexist!" I hear a couple people already shouting. The most common defense of this film is to call anyone who doesn't like it a chauvinist and claim that they're just uncomfortable with a strong, assertive female character, but that's really not it at all. My counter-point to this argument is that Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character is a whiny bitch and Zoey Deschanel's character is a manipulative twat and anyone who can't see this has behaved too much like one or both of them at some point in their lives to stop being butthurt and admit it. Beyond hating both main characters I don't have any logical reason why I despise this movie so much, but who says I have to be logical? Despite fully loving Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zoey Deschanel in other roles they've played over the years I still wish their characters (whose names I never bothered to learn out of spite) from this movie were real people so that I could tell both of them to shut up to their faces right before I lit them on fire with my mind.