Zombies! What are they good for?

Zombies only want you for your brains

A debate that HyperHam seems to be having with her mother (and defacto, me) …

What can you do with an untamed zombie?

So we’re leaving out the zombies at the end of Shaun of the Dead, Fido and Land of the Dead, ie the ones that have either been trained, or shown signs of doing things other than wanting to eat your brains out.

This does include zombies who can talk and reason – as in the ones in Tasty Flesh and Marvel Zombies – just as long as they still have an all-consuming desire to eat your brains and flesh.

Suggestions that we’ve had so far include:

• Prostitutes/escorts – which wouldn’t work because prostitutes/escorts work for money. And what’s the good of money if it doesn’t get you brains? Plus, of course, would a zombified escort want their client’s money or their brain? Their brain, of course.
• Loan shark heavies – ie a loan shark, or someone you owe money to, threatens to send zombies to your door. This wouldn’t work because a zombie let loose would end up chomping through the brains of the person you owed money to – or worse yet, turning them into zombies. And a zombie isn’t going to work hard to pay up your debt.

Surely, the whole reason that zombies are such a popular topic in culture is because they stand for the relentless, the indefinable. The thing that cannot be stopped, reasoned with or outnumbered.

Of course, I say all this without having seen a single zombie film (aside from the rather terrible Resident Evil: Apocalypse) because I’m rather scared of them in the movie world. Of course, this didn’t stop HyperHam buying me the surprisingly good The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead which is a great read. With a couple of good life lessons thrown in for good measure.

Note to future self: I’m scared of zombies. So stop looking for Flickr pics of zombies at midnight. Because it’s just going to scare you.

Mirrored from almost witty.

Zombies! What are they good for?

A debate that shove_this_job seems to be having with her mother (and defacto, me) …

What can you do with an untamed zombie?

So we’re leaving out the zombies at the end of Shaun of the Dead, Fido and Land of the Dead, ie the ones that have either been trained, or shown signs of doing things other than wanting to eat your brains out.

This does include zombies who can talk and reason – as in the ones in Tasty Flesh and Marvel Zombies – just as long as they still have an all-consuming desire to eat your brains and flesh.

Suggestions that we’ve had so far include:

• Prostitutes/escorts – which wouldn’t work because prostitutes/escorts work for money. And what’s the good of money if it doesn’t get you brains? Plus, of course, would a zombified escort want their client’s money or their brain? Their brain, of course.
• Loan shark heavies – ie a loan shark, or someone you owe money to, threatens to send zombies to your door. This wouldn’t work because a zombie let loose would end up chomping through the brains of the person you owed money to – or worse yet, turning them into zombies. And a zombie isn’t going to work hard to pay up your debt.

Surely, the whole reason that zombies are such a popular topic in culture is because they stand for the relentless, the indefinable. The thing that cannot be stopped, reasoned with or outnumbered.

Of course, I say all this without having seen a single zombie film (aside from the rather terrible Resident Evil: Apocalypse) because I'm rather scared of them in the movie world. Of course, this didn’t stop shove_this_job buying me the surprisingly good The Zen of Zombie: Better Living Through the Undead which is a great read. With a couple of good life lessons thrown in for good measure.

Note to future self: I’m scared of zombies. So stop looking for Flickr pics of zombies at midnight. Because it’s just going to scare you.

Mirrored from almost witty.

Fandoms combining…

In an era where fanfic writers think nothing of plonking the Red Dwarf crew on the Starship Enterprise, or the cast of Spaced in the TARDIS, it shouldn’t really come as that much of a surprise when professional media creators do the same thing.

Thus today, where we discover that Richard Curtis (famed romantic comedy writer behind Love Actually, Four Weddings, Blackadder and the superb and under-rated The Tall Guy) is writing a script for Doctor Who. This has met with a little consternation.

Of course, their fear comes from the possibility that romance might rear its ugly head in Doctor Who. It should, of course, be pointed out that:
- Richard Curtis, for all his faults, is a master at creating characters you like. Albeit middle-class English ones, of various hues and abilities.
- Pretty much all of Steven Moffat’s celebrated scripts for Doctor Who have had huge dollops of romance in them. Doctor Who fans and Hugo Award adjudicators have lapped them up in their droves.

The news that the Pet Shop Boys have written a song for Shirley Bassey’s new album also sent my geek fandom radar into overdrive. The Pet Shop Boys write fantastic songs – but let’s face it, Shirley Bassey’s got a much more powerful voice that deserves to be used.

Mirrored from almost witty.

Fandoms combining…

In an era where fanfic writers think nothing of plonking the Red Dwarf crew on the Starship Enterprise, or the cast of Spaced in the TARDIS, it shouldn’t really come as that much of a surprise when professional media creators do the same thing.

Thus today, where we discover that Richard Curtis (famed romantic comedy writer behind Love Actually, Four Weddings, Blackadder and the superb and under-rated The Tall Guy) is writing a script for Doctor Who. This has met with a little consternation.

Of course, their fear comes from the possibility that romance might rear its ugly head in Doctor Who. It should, of course, be pointed out that:
- Richard Curtis, for all his faults, is a master at creating characters you like. Albeit middle-class English ones, of various hues and abilities.
- Pretty much all of Steven Moffat’s celebrated scripts for Doctor Who have had huge dollops of romance in them. Doctor Who fans and Hugo Award adjudicators have lapped them up in their droves.

The news that the Pet Shop Boys have written a song for Shirley Bassey’s new album also sent my geek fandom radar into overdrive. The Pet Shop Boys write fantastic songs – but let’s face it, Shirley Bassey’s got a much more powerful voice that deserves to be used.

Mirrored from almost witty.