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.