Guest Outsider Poetry Blog: Dr. Millard Rausch

We're going to turn Zombie Logic over to the capable hands (and frontal lobe) of Dr. Millard Rausch tonight, who has a few words about dummies, Hamm's beer, and Outsider Poetry, in no particular order. 

Back in 1978 Dr. Millard Rausch was a second year professor at Penn, just trying to perfect his syllabus when the Zombie Outbreak of 1978 changed everything. Being one of the world's foremost experts on Xenobiology, Dr. Rausch was made an offer he could not refuse by the military to become a government spokesperson on zombie awareness. It was in the green room at WGON studios in Pittsburgh that he wrote this poem.

Dumb Questions

In every zombie movie 

From Zombie Lake to 

Children Shouldn’t Play 

With Dead Things, 

The living wonder 

What motivates the undead 

To clamor for human flesh, 

As if the undead are method 

Actors in a bad Fellini movie.

In one movie a coroner 

Asks the torso 

Of a bound zombie woman 

Why she lusts for brains.

Seems like a stupid question 

To ask someone 

Who wanted to eat your brains. 

Meanwhile, things had gone from bad to worse back at the WGON studio, and Dr. Rausch had just called 200 million Americans dummies. Americans are dummies, but they really don't like to be called dummies, so after the show Dr. Rausch found himself surrounded by a nation of angry dummies who were armed for a zombie Apocalypse. Second choice of enemies: Dr. Millard Rausch. Fortunately, the good doctor had prepared for just such an occasion, and repaired to Zombie Logic Ranch in Vermont where he wrote Outsider Poetry for the next decade, including this ditty...

True Romance

In the movie 

A zombie impaled 

Through the throat 

By a five iron gurgles 

“Must blend, 

Must pass for human,” 

To a woman he loves 

Too much to devour 

Until a shovel separates 

His head into two neat 

Hemispheres pretty much 

Ending his dream. 

Dr. Millard Rausch explaining zombie tribal behavior to dumb Americans in 1978

 

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Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things Beta Cassette

   Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

You don't see one of these very often. In fact, I'll wager you haven't seen one of these at all. This is a Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things Beta Cassette. I bought it several weeks ago, even before I started pruning my private collections and selling things on Ebay, and it arrived today from Australia. That and a couple of cans of Mr. Pibb are cheering me up. Not that I really need cheering up, the schedule has just been a little tense this summer.

Gorgon Video Beta version of Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. Might have to plug in the old Betacord tonight and see if this one works. Even if it doesn't, I'm a big fan of ex rental tapes. Be kind, rewind.

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Why Dr. Millard Rausch Went Into Seclusion

Millions and millions of American's saw Dr. Millard Rausch's appearances at WGON studios during the Zombie Apocalypse of 1978. The good doctor thought he was only addressing the people of Pittsburgh, but little did he know his words were being broadcast to every emergency broadcast affiliate in America. Millions and millions of people heard only the words "dummies, dummies," and completely tuned out advice from the doctor that could have saved millions of lives. 

When it became apparent to Dr. Rausch that he was now the most hated man in America he didn't have time to wait for zombies to eat the brains of every single person who remembered him calling them a dummy, so he did the next best thing: he changed his name to Dr. Henry Wolfsburg and assumed the alias of  the mild-mannered cultural anthropologist and zombie bikini contest judge. But he just couldn't quit calling people dummies, so he formed The Hall of Bad Dudes to draw the proper attention to several historical dummies. 

Eventually, virtually every human brain was either eaten or converted to zombieism due to utter ignorance and dummietood, yet Dr. Rausch had holed up at his ranch in Vermont waiting for the zombies to run out of food. 

Dr. Millard Rausch leaving Club 54 October 6, 1978 after partying with Mick Jagger and zombie Charo. Shortly after he was forced to go into hiding after calling millions of Americans dummies. 

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Oasis of the Zombies and Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies Are the Same Movie

It took me two years to figure out Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies and Oasis of the Zombies are the same movie. You might ask, how the hell does such a thing happen. You probably wouldn't ask, but for the sake of this ersatz blog entry some hypothetical person must ask, so let's assume you did. But first I have to go to Google and get pictures of Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies and Oasis of the Zombies, which are the same movie. Here's some of the stuff that might have happened in the movie.

Two chicks at the Oasis

These two chicks really like each other. So they decide to head to a remote oasis in the middle of the desert and do whatever it is they're about to do.

This guy sees what they're doing, and it causes his eyes to bug out. I call this zombie Bugeye Johnson. Inexplicably throughout the movie people keep showing up at this oasis that has been forgotten since an ambush planted a squad of Nazis there during WWII. If you decide to watch it with the sound on you'll discover there is some plot. I never have, so I'm not sure what the plot is. And that's part and parcel of the explanation as to why it took me two years to figure out Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies and Oasis of the Zombies are the same movie. More than that, they're really neither one, because the movie is actually titled Treasure of the Living Dead, but don't tell every video store in the history of video stores that.

In the 1990's and in the early part of this Millennium there used to be this thing called a video rental store, where you could go rent Beta or VHS tapes and go home and put them in your Betamax or VHS player. Near the advent of the 3rd Millennium they decided only DVD copies would be available, then most of the movies disappeared altogether. 

Now they had these video stores everywhere. Gas stations, laundromats, supermarkets. Video stores. And each one had a slightly different selection, so it was incumbent upon one who wanted to see new movies to travel around outside of the house (I know, crazy) in search of these new videos. But movie distributors were tricky. They knew you didn't know Zombie2 was actually the Fulci classic Zombie, but packaged as Zombie 2 because in Italy Dawn of the Dead was packaged as Zombie so the real Zombie couldn't be titled Zombie it had to be titled Zombie 2. Here's another picture from Treasure of the Living Dead for no good reason.

What do the zombies do in Treasure of the Living Dead in between bands of tourists and treasure hunters showing up to be eaten? Maybe they have a band. I don't know. This is actually a really nice shot from Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies, err, Oasis of the Dead.

In closing I'd like to say the reason it took me two years to figure out Oasis of the Dead and Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies are really the same movie, and that movie is actually titled Treasure of the Living Dead is that I never watched it. I literally rented it almost a dozen times before I turned the sound on. I blame the patriarchy. Misogynist filmmakers like Jess Franco made so many movies that all looked the same that it was years before I looked up enough from my reading to see that these were the same two women in the opening scene being eaten over and over and over. 

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Is Day of the Dead a More Important Movie Than Dawn of the Dead?

I remember Roger Ebert's review of George Romero's third zombie movie, Day of the Dead, from his 1991 version of Roger Ebert's Movie Home Companion. One and a half stars. It's a typical review of Day of the Dead, a movie that for almost two decades was considered a dismal failure, and the least of what was Romero's trilogy of zombie movies. Considering that Ebert was a champion of Dawn of the Dead, and a prime mover in making other critics, academics, and intelligentsia take that movie seriously as an incisive satire of American consumerist society, it seems unfortunate that Ebert seemed to really miss the point of Day of the Dead, a movie with an equally, if not more important statement to make about American society. The loss of communication between increasingly fragmented groups of people with disparate, and often opposing, morals, ethics, and self-interests. Dawn of the Dead was the much more successful movie, but in my opinion Day of the Dead dealt with what has become a far more serious problem in American society long before it became obvious to others. 

One of Ebert's main criticisms of the movie was that the characters "upstage the ghouls" by "shouting their lines from beginning to end." Yes, this is exactly what happens in Day of the Dead. It's mainly a movie about humans not being able to get along and form a cohesive mini-society with some sort of civility when it is needed the most. The zombies are almost a peripheral danger. It's really the humans who pose the most danger to each other. The movie is about loss of civility, communication, and the disintegration of behavior. And it's hyper-relevant in light of recent developments in an America where religion, politics, and race have turned us into a fractured nation of doomsday preppers banding together with those who look and believe like us, and considering everyone else the enemy. If you're not in our camp, we'll demonize and dehumanize you, and you might as well be a zombie because if we see you when the shit goes down we'll aim for the head. 

No, Day of the Dead is not a superior movie to Dawn of the Dead, but thirty years later it's message is far more relevant and terrifying than the consumer-driven zombies shuffling through the mall because it was such an important place in their lives. We've blown past the point where greed or vanity or self-serving interest are new problems in America. We're in an all-out undeclared war where most of us are prepared to blow off another human being's head if they cut us off in traffic. 

In Day of the Dead Dr. Logan, who is working on a way to make zombies behave by employing  operant conditioning techniques, is challenged by the military leader Rhodes, who considers his methods and goal ridiculous, prompting Dr. Logan to say the line I think is the crux of the movie: "It's the bare beginning of social behavior. Civilized behavior. Civil behavior is what distinguishes us from the lower forms. It's what enables us to communicate. To go about things in an orderly fashion without attacking each other like beasts in the wild. Civility must be rewarded, Captain. If it isn't rewarded, then there's no use for it. There's just no use for it at all."

I think in this moment in American history we're losing our civilized behavior, mostly because we've stopped rewarding decent, altruistic acts, and started rewarding selfish, irresponsible behavior. My case in point is a recent book detailing why psychopaths can be good. This on the heels of a popular book by a female lawyer who unapologetically confesses to being a sociopath, and using her deficiencies as a human being as an advantage, not a detriment. Movies like Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street have taught us greed is good, and that it doesn't matter how you succeed, as long as you succeed. Just win, baby, to quote the late owner of the Los Angeles Raiders, Al Davis. Now we have generations of Americans, working side by side, who are beginning to believe the ends justifies any means. 

What will become of this? When good behavior is no longer rewarded. Will there simply be no use for it?

Richard Liberty as Dr. Logan in the 1985 zombie movie Day of the Dead
"It's the bare beginning of social behavior. Civilized behavior. Civil behavior is what distinguishes us from the lower forms. It's what enables us to communicate. To go about things in an orderly fashion without attacking each other like beasts in the wild. Civility must be rewarded, Captain. If it isn't rewarded, then there's no use for it. There's just no use for it at all."

The interceding three decades since Day of the Dead was released have done a great deal to allow critics to re-evaluate this film and decide it's pretty damn good. But it's more than good, it's prescient. In it's microcosm of a society falling apart it presaged the past decade in the American experience almost perfectly. Everyone yelling, unconcerned with anything but their own agenda, and zombies lurking in the periphery, just waiting for anyone to make a mistake and get within their reach. 

We're fucked. And we're fucked good. Unless.... Unless what? Unless we can get them to behave....

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The Majority of Human Beings Are Being Transformed Into Zombies Before Our Eyes

If one redefines the word "zombie" to mean less the corpse of a dead human, re-animated through some chemical or metaphysical means, to a human who had had his/her humanity diminished to the point where they are no longer strictly human, it now becomes much more easy to consider the possibility that there is an active campaign by the power elite to reduce much of humanity to the level of this definition of zombie so that they can hunt us at their leisure, and for their amusement.

I worked on this plan in its earliest form. Scripting out how most of it would be done. 

These are the blueprints for Mark Siwak's plan to convert 200 acres of Detroit into a zombie-themed amusement park. What they're not telling you is the zombies will be real, and the amusement will be hunting them. Of course they won't technically be zombies, they'll be human beings systematically stripped of their human through denial of basic human necessities like food, water, and medicine. The plan will be executed in other American cities, then internationally. 

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How I Won The Zombie Apocalypse

I had a dream this morning that I was obliged to escape a wooded setting via a bicycle proffered to me by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. To my shock the bicycle was in perfect working order, and my legs were sufficient to propel it. It seemed even that the bike was lending its own energy to the task of escaping the unknown, unseen force I knew was pursuing me. I pedaled effortlessly up a hill. The wheels remained in tact. I marveled at the structural integrity of that bike. Didn't it realize this was a dream. Brakes fail. Wheels spin vainly in the mud. 

As I ascended to the top of the hill one more obstacle appeared before me: a corkscrew staircase with no steps. Still being fully conscious I was in a dream I awaited the banana peel as I mounted the staircase. It was not sheer. My wheels did not slip. Indeed I was as confident and proficient in my navigation of the staircase aboard my miracle bicycle as I was on solid ground. 

Then complications arose. Aha I whispered to myself. Now we'll get things back to some state of normalcy. 

How I won the Zombie Apocalypse

Zombies. Finally, I had been overtaken by the sinister complication that had been stalking me. Down the slide I plummeted. Surely now I'll be eaten, I thought. It was a glorious bicycle ride. But to my amazement, at the bottom of the staircase I slid conveniently into an arsenal of zombie-smashing clubs, hammers, and blunt instruments, all of which I found did not have broken handles and were more than efficient at dislodging a zombie from its brain. 

Onward. On a muddy road. Now in a gray van I had driven for a short time and had never found reliable. But now it was. Parked in some thicket to cloak our existence, a buddy and I found the need to burn some paperwork pressing. So we did so right there in the cab of the van. Why it did not set the upholstery on fire I had no idea. Now on foot we tramped down the muddy road, armed with rifles I knew would turn to useless toys the moment we were confronted with an enemy. Which soon we were.

More legions of zombies. This was it. This was the Zombie Apocalypse, and I was in the midst of it with a gun that had been malfunctioning in my dreams since childhood. But not this day. Each time I squeezed the trigger it fired a burst of ammunition. It did not jam. It did not turn to a daffodil. Up the road we marched. He disappeared.

And was replaced by a girl I had fancied for many years in school. We found ourselves together at a barricade, with bleachers set up as if the end of it all had become a sporting event. We were both good shots and dispatched rows of zombies that popped up behind the bleachers as if they were in a video game. Then it was over. We had won the Zombie Apocalypse. I had won the girl. Not a single thing had gone wrong. 

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The Zombie Mayor

What if Green Party Candidate Jesus Correa had become mayor of Rockford, IL

The Zombie Mayor Sceenplay CLICK HERE Pin It

Zombiethon Wizard Video Counter Display

I am now the proud possessor of this Zombiethon Wizard Video Counter Display from 1986. This makes me happy for multiple reasons. The first and primary reason is I've been a zombie genre fan since I was twelve, and when I went to Rockford College there just weren't very many zombie movies on the shelf to rent at the video stores. But once place that did have a few was Dollar Video on Morsay Drive. In fact, they had this very movie, which I would rent at six month intervals over a period of four years until Dollar Video disappeared. 

The second reason is that I didn't know there was a movie poster for this movie at all because it was made for video. The interstitial zombie shorts directed by Ken Dixon are worth the watch in themself. 

Third, I love this poster. After finding a version of The Monster Club movie poster I didn't know existed a few weeks ago this really puts a cherry on my sundae. There are still a few posters I consider essential to my ongoing collection, but finding one I never even knew existed is even sweeter. Oh, here's the poster...

I never realized there was such a following for Wizard Video memorabilia until I found the competition for this beauty fierce.  Because I have never seen another one I had to have it. 

I say, old sport, I'll trade you this perfectly good white chick for your copy of  the Zombiethon poster.

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November 18th Is Dr. Millard Rausch Questions Your Intelligence Day

Dr. Millard Rausch cares about your well-being. But like most scientists he has serious questions about your intelligence level. He has slightly ambivalent feelings about humanity surviving the Zombie Apocalypse. On one hand his dry cleaner is a human, and as often as Dr. Rausch spills jelly donut filling on his snappy blazer he'd be in some deep shit if his dry cleaner became a shambler. But everyone who knows Millard Rausch knows he's a terrible driver and would benefit substantially if 99% of the human race would abandon driving for a slower, more unobtrusive method of transportation, such as shuffling. 

Dr. Millard Rausch is conflicted. He really couldn't give two shits if most of you survive the Zombie Apocalypse, but some of you make those prune danishes he really likes. On November 18th keep Dr. Rausch in mind as you slug through your day hoping that everyone in front of you in traffic or at the Walmart would die so you could get home thirty seconds faster to watch Dancing With the Stars.

Dr. Millard Rausch, the eye-patch wearing scientist from Dawn of the Dead who tries to remain rational and calm in the face of zombie pandemic, was played by actor Richard France, who appeared in seven movies in all, and according to IMDB is a noted Orson Welles scholar. One wonders in the end why he even bothered. 

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Don't Open the Window, Unless You Want To Attract Undead Pervs

I like it when movies tell me what to do. Don't Go In the Woods, Don't Look In the Basement, Don't Answer the Phone, because I rarely know what to do. But of all the advice I ever received from movie posters I believe Don't Open the Window is the most useless. Zombies can come in a window, I suppose, but they rarely do. They're dead, they're stiff, and because they're just pure, motorized biological drive they tend to take the path of least resistance. Sure, you can close the window, but I would probably concentrate on the front door first. This movie poster does speak one truth, though, in the motion picture Don't Open the Window, better known as Let Sleeping Corpses Lie and less known also as The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue, they have tampered with nature and at least a few people will pay the price. 

Could you please open the window, Mabel? No, there's a zombie out there eating someone's entrails. In that case, don't open the window. We'll just stare at the naked chick in the neighbor's window. perhaps this woman's real problem with attracting undesirable type dead pervs is she's standing in the window naked. That should be the title of the movie. Don't Stand In Your Window Naked If You Don't Want Undead Pervs To Gather Outside.

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Andrew Davis Made Me Watch Hard Rock Zombies (And I Thank Him)

I really like the style of artist Andrew Davis. He's wry and unique and never goes for the low-hanging fruit. This is a new piece of his Zombie Logic Press is lucky enough to be able to feature. You figure it out.

I don't know what's happening here. Do you?

I met Andrew back in 2005 when he started coming to the bar my brother and I had opened along the Rock River. For the first winter there things were pretty sparse and it was always nice to see him and his friends there. By spring we had become friends and concocted an idea to use the empty bar to do something both of us had always wanted to do: show zombie movies. And Zombie Night was born. The first Tuesday we had 12-15 people there to watch Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, but by June we were counting over 250 people showing up to watch classics like The Stuff, Troll 2, Hard Rock Zombies, and Riki-Oh:The Story of Ricky. About that time a professional Roller Derby league formed in Rockford (in the bathroom of the bar, actually), and the bar became the home for that. I mention it because Andrew Davis did a series of really great posters for both Rockford Rage Roller Derby and Zombie Night. He tends to be avery low-key about his own work, which is why I'm sort of keen to tell you how good it is. Here's a bad scan of the poster he came up with for Zombie Night.

So, I was super-excited when I learned Mr. Davis was planning an ongoing webcomic titled Demoted. I was further intrigued by the premise: a demon is demoted to Earth and must bear the indignity of working with a dullard he considers beneath him. As well as interact with the most putrid form of low-level scum in the Multiverse... humanity. I think that's what he told me it was about. To me that's what it's about. Unfortunately, there is only one episode of Demoted. 

And I'm going to be a dick and make you go here to read the rest of it.


Demoted #1

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Detroit To Become Zombie Amusement Park

I think the only problem with Mark Siwak's plan to convert 200 acres of the city formerly known as Detroit into a zombie-themed amusement park is that he's vastly overestimated the demand for parking. 

March 4, 2013 update: I see the governor of Michigan is attempting to foist an emergency city planner on Detroit. Perhaps that official, who would hypothetically have veto powers over the mayor and city council, would be savvy enough to turn Detroit in to a zombie theme park.

Hell, as long as the CDC is asking Americans to prepare for a zombie apolcalypse, why not just use the city of Detroit as huge training complex for zombie pandemic simulations and tactics. Not a lot different than Dawn of the Dead, except that was in Pittsburgh. 

July 19, 2013: And the elaborate ruse nears the endgame: namely, to transform Detroit into a zombie amusement park where the wealthy can pay a fee, then shoot as many "zombies" as contents their black hearts.  

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Top Ten Zombie Movies That Aren't Zombie Movies At All

 I'm not going to be persnickety here and make overly-anal distinctions between zombies and the living dead. For our purposes zombies and the living dead will be used generically and interchangeably. But what we will be doing is examining ten movies that on the surface seem to be zombie movies, but with further examination aren't zombie movies at all. Here we go...

1) The Serpent and the Rainbow

Why it's not a zombie movie? Says right there on the movie poster. They're not dead. never were. What it is is a fascinating, and true story about the work of ethnobotanist Wade Davis in Haiti. Throw in a little voodoo and a a tetrodotoxin with mind-altering properties and you have a heady brew that can simulate what looks like death and ultimate resurrection. The Serpent and the Rainbow is a great zombie film directed by Wes Craven. Highly recommended.

2) Night of the Creeps

Why it's not a zombie movie? The "zombies" are more just containers for alien slugs. It's a quibble, yes, but I think a valid one. This a movie about alien brain parasites, not zombies. However....

Thrill me. Tom Atkins is the man. The Fog, Halloween 3, Creepshow, Escape From New York. One of the best horror movies of the entire decade of the 80's, but slightly NOT a zombie movie.

3) 28 Days Later

Why it's not a zombie movie? They're not dead. They have the Rage virus. I'm a shambler zombie movie guy myself, but this is still a good movie. Not a zombie movie, but a good movie.

4) The Last Man on Earth/The Omega Man

Why it's not a zombie movie? Another case where they're not dead. They also feed on plasma, not bodies or brains, which makes them more vampiric. One of my all time favorite movies. But not a zombie movie. 

Just wanted to sneak a photo of these two nasties in here.

5) The Crazies

Why it's not a zombie movie. After the accidental release of a experimental biological weapon in a small town people go crazy and become violent, but they aren't dead. Another metaphor for mass hysteria and one of George Romero's most unusual films. 

6) C.H.U.D

Why it's not a zombie movie? Says why right on the movie poster. They're not human, and as the scientist in Dawn of the Dead is so clear in explaining, "Cannibalism involves an intra-species phenomenon." 

6) Pontypool

Why it's not a zombie movie? Virused, but not dead. In this very unlikely, but fascinating movie based on the novel Pontypool Changes Everything, by Anthony Burgess, it is human language that is a virus that transforms people into violent crazies. The movie, though not directly based on Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast, is a homage to the power of words themselves to cause mass hysteria. A movie I absolutely think is a credit to the genre, but not a zombie movie.

7) Thriller

Why it's not a zombie movie? Because it's not a movie. I wish it were. Because it would be one of the great zombie movies of all time. 

8) Night of the Comet

Why it's not a zombie movie. In the case of those who have been mutated by the comet, they aren't dead, and in the case of the ghoulish scientists who want to use the healthy living's blood to cure themselves, they're not dead, either. It's a magnificent movie. Another one of the best horror movies of the 80's, but not exactly a zombie movie.

9) The Signal

Why it's not a zombie movie. Like Pontypool, people are driven violently insane by a signal broadcast through electronic devices, but they're not dead. 

10) The Children

Why it's not a zombie movie. Once again, not dead, never dead, just sugared-up and too close to a nuclear reactor. Sounds exactly like my youth, but you didn't catch me eating people. You didn't catch me, at least. I'll wager 90% of you haven't seen this one and if low, low budget horror movies aren't your thing, skip it, but if you like weird gems of movies this might be for you. 

So, there you have it. Ten zombie movies that aren't really zombie movies at all. Do you have any movies to add to the list, or would you like to add something to or debate any of these entries? 

While you're here, check out these zombie blogs

The CDC Is Preparing For a Zombie Apocalypse

The tale of The Zombie, Mutant Banana

The Top Five Zombie Movie Posters of All Time

The 2012 Zombie Academy Awards

Single Zombie Female

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The CDC Is Preparing For a Zombie Apocalypse

Urgent!: Get the very latest outbreak of Zombie Attacks

The comedian George Carlin famously quipped "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." It's funny, then it's scary as hell. You look to your left, and you look to your right in traffic and realize at least one of those people, and probably both, has never read Shakespeare, planted a seed, voted, or listened to Bach. And that person is a high school English teacher. Stupid isn't as funny as it used to be because the amount of people who offset the stupid is rapidly dwindling in our societies. 

My favorite part of George Carlin's shows was the audience wildly applauding his rants about stupidity as if he were referring to everyone outside of the theater. He meant you. 

     Even as I research this topic some glaring examples of how we are losing out brainpower leap out at me, the most recent of which being a scholarly article referring to satirical news source The Onion to make a point. I was in this particular instance looking for statistics, not opinions, and certainly not opinions formulated by the type of people who spent their adolescence jerking off in the audio visual room and playing Dungeons and Dragons. 

Smart ass, but not smart enough to find a pussy in a stray cat shelter.

     If you do a search with the term are people getting dumber you'll see a wide array of opinions. But let me throw a twist into this topic. I'm not going to assert that we're becoming dumber, but that we're becoming less human. We're losing the very essence of what makes us human. You'll rarely see me quoting scripture in my writing, but the passage "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" comes immediately to mind. All the libraries of the world can now be contained in a device that fits in one's hand, but who is there to read it anymore?

     Maybe there are people out there who don't think we need our humanity anymore. I don't want to get into conspiracy theory. It just feels like something is being stolen, or slowly beaten out of us by an increasingly soulless culture that trains us to consume and little else. You see it when you're among people. Dead, dull eyes with nothing behind them. Whether this person is a nuclear physicist, a brain surgeon, or a ditch digger is irrelevant, they're barely human, and that's what we're losing. We're being fed food with no nutrition, reading books with no content, the environment is saturated with toxins who's impact on our bodies and minds we are only beginning to comprehend, we stare all day at screens that lull us into a trance some of us never seem to awaken from. Is this just a consequence of the technology available, or something deeper and more menacing? Does it matter? Something is being bled out of us and like the proverbial frog in the boiling water, we're not seeming to notice.

Hint. Hint.

     Last summer I had dinner with two high school teachers. A husband and wife team. They confided in me that they had given up on trying to make their students read classic literature because they refused to do it, instead letting the students choose for themselves what they would read, which was invariably some moronic graphic novel. I have friends who will argue with a straight face that graphic novels are a fine substitute for reading the classic novels of history. I'm sure you also know people will argue this point. Scary, isn't it.

Read a fucking book.

     Here I am six paragraphs deep, and I've buried the lead. A story that sort of challenged my sense that anyone is even smart enough to run this monkey farm anymore in multiple ways. 

Well, apparently what the CDC is doing with our time, instead of eliminating scourges like E Bola, whooping cough, and medieval diseases like Bubonic Plague which are making a comeback, is preparing us for a Zombie Apocalypse. When the CDC issued a warning to Americans that they should be prepared for a Zombie Apocalypse what they were really telling us is that know there is something out there that they are incapable of dealing with.

You're pulling our legs, right? You're the same guy running for Winnebago County Coroner as a gag, so you're probably pulling another fast one on us when you say the CDC, in charge of one of the most solemn tasks in all of society, namely protecting the populace from serious diseases, is using our tax dollars to prepare for a Zombie Apocalypse. Surely modern society hasn't been dragged down to that level of stupid.

CDC Zombie Preparedness Campaign

What's truly frightening about this campaign can be summed up in a scene from Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen's Captain Willard character comes ashore in a forward position drawing heavy fire and, stumbling upon two grunts, asks "Who's in charge here?", to which they reply "Ain't you?" If high school teachers think graphic novels written at the level of sophistication of a twelve year old boy in arrested development, replete with misogyny, mindless violence, and philosophy doled out with all the complexity of a Loony Tunes cartoon, and if our last and best defense against the plethora of diseases constantly mutating and conspiring to end humanity as we know it is an agency that finds it humorous to resort to the lowest common denominator to try and reach an audience, we're fucked. Somebody has to be the adult. We can't all be The Fonz, because when you look at it, The Fonz was a pretty sad  character. Richie Cunningham had to grow up sooner or later, and part of that process was leaving The Fonz behind. There are far more important things than being trendy. 

Dumbing It Down 

I dumbed it down. 

I fed it McNuggets 

And put it to sleep 

With pop tunes. 

I made it join 

The Republican party. 

I drugged it with 

Cable television, 

I bribed it with 

Guilt-free sex 

And threatened it 

With religion. 

I spent a lifetime 

Beating it 

Into submission and 

The ungrateful bastard 

Still writes this poem. 

     That's a poem from my fourth book of poems, Submerged Structure. Michigan State recently added a course on surviving a Zombie Pandemic. And imagine, even more than half the people are quite dumber than that. Good night, and good luck.

See what all the fuss is about Single Zombie Female
Get a housecall from Dr. Strangedog

One of the overriding themes of the zombie genre, at least the movies that have some sort of theme, is that YOU are the zombie. It is your ignorance, your blind desire to be destructive, consume without any sense of moderation or show any sense of appreciation for culture, history, or the rules that underpin civilization that  make you soulless and less than human. It's analogous to Plato's Myth of the Cave. The zombie genre is about diminished humanity. The forces of ignorance of mass apathy that pile up outside our gates, fester, then return to destroy us. But those revenants aren't some new species. "They are us, that's all." The zombie genre is losing perspective of that. Never forget that YOU are the zombie and you'll never fail to understand the message of the best zombie movies. 

You're not the intrepid hero making a valiant attempt to save the last vestiges of humanity from the mindless, lumbering hordes whose only concern is to rip and destroy and consume. You're in the horde. Consider that and you'll be closer to re-establishing your humanity. 

Another popular subtheme of good zombie movies is ignoring a problem until it comes back to devour you. Simply being too apathetic, too ignorant, or too lazy to realize that the environment or the culture that sustains you is being perverted, polluted, and becoming violently reactive to your very existence. But you can't be bothered to notice because you got the big screen tv and the video games. At the last moment you want to hunker down, prepare for the end, and fight off the zombies, but what's the point, because you've lost already. You're barely human. You're just a receptacle for the same toxic garbage that created the zombies. You are them. 

In the end, the zombie genre is about losing your humanity. Giving it away inch by inch, day by day. Having it stripped from you by food with no nutrition, education with no learning, entertainment with no substance, a society with no conscience, and religion without compassion. When the zombies do finally arrive there's not much brainpower left to consume. The zombies go away in disgust. And the cycle begins again. 

And finally, there's Bub. The most beloved zombie of all time. Why? Because he's becoming more human. Bub likes Beethoven and shows curiosity and loyalty. Maybe more of us should try that sometime.

March 29, 2013 update: The President just signed the Monsanto Protection Act this week. What method will be the cause of the Zombie Apocalypse? Maybe Wormwood, maybe chicken McNuggets. 

August 2, 2014. They've turned the water off in Detroit, everyone in America seems to be prepping and arming for some impending Armageddon, and two Mormon missionaries, stricken with Ebola in Africa, are being transported to Atlanta. Sounds like the beginning of a zombie movie to me. Donald Trump advises that we shouldn't allow the missionaries back into the United States, and who knows more about being a flesh-eating virus than him?

Like the Space Age, the Zombie Apocalypse is now behind us. 

     

     


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