A while back, Manfred posted the catchy music video Zombies On Your Lawn, which is a bunch of friends wearing silly costumes and mugging to a silly song (it gave me hope for our upcoming singing herring video). The song is from the online game Plants vs. Zombies, in which plants with powers (e.g. pea plants shoot peas) battle various kinds of zombies--all trying to get into your cozy house.
I don't much like games. But bink checked it out, and soon she was playing the free version of the game every afternoon at tea time. It has the healing powers she needed, having been attacked by zombies all fall, in the form of family horridness of all stripes.
Eventually she bought the full version of the game, and when her niece and nephew came to stay last week, when they got bored, she sent them off to squash zombies. Which they loved.
There's something comforting about battling zombies.
What's the appeal? My friend David suggests we like them because they're totally bad, but we can do something about them.
They're like Viagra for our sense of impotence in the face of global warming, loveless marriages, cancer, the end of oil, etc.
I'd say it's also because there's something inherently silly and endearing about them. Lumbering, dimwitted creatures, they are us gone bad, yes; but they're also a bit pathetic, these poor soulless things.
You actually do them a favor when you kill them, as who would want to be undead? Everybody wins!
How glad I was that I had my camera when I saw a pile of traffic cones downtown yesterday. I quickly set it up and popped a cone on my head, in imitation of the Conehead Zombie from Plants vs. Zombies.
I was surprised: those things are heavy. I wonder if a zombie would really have the neck muscles to support one.
So, I've lost track of who changed whose life, but I ended up with a cone on my head downtown, and that's a good thing in a naughty world.Happy Friday the 13th!
P.S. I highly recommend Calla's hilarious review at Cocktail Party Physics of the upcoming end-of-the-world movie 2012, "The Mayans Warned Us: Don't Trespass in Yellowstone".
Turns out, from a scientific point of view, neutrinos won't destroy the world in 2012, but angry bears and boiling geysers can hurt you bad.
Gracefully mordant post.
ReplyDeleteI like your interpretation of the zombie fad that's going on right now. Us gone bad, but we didn't really mean it (to destroy the climate, each other, other countries, etc., etc.). We just didn't really have brains or feelings and it wasn't our fault for that reason.
ReplyDeleteCollege campuses are having various kinds of zombie-fests now. i don't know the details, but on just about every campus Nathan and I visited there was some kind of zombie event.
I jumped into the zombie zeitgeist after days and weeks of assisting him in writing and editing with a fine tooth comb the endless essays, statements, descriptions, samples of blood, et al necessary to apply to colleges. Late one school/work night, after we had both been staring at the computer for hours doing this stuff, he was stuck on a conclusion to a statement as to why he wanted to attend this particular fine instution. He wrote "When we visited my zombie really thought it was cool." We laughed until we cried.
I think I'll start using that as a reason for liking/not liking, doing/not doing things. Sort of like an adult imaginary friend, but you've got to respect a zombie because it can eat your head.
Thanks, Art Sparker!
ReplyDeleteNANCY: What I want to know is, did Nathan send that answer off? : )
Nice analysis of zombie "we didn't mean it." They don't mean it, but they'll eat our brains anyway.
ARgh!
ReplyDeleteNow I've got this game, for which I blame you - its taking over my life, I'm playing it before Breakfast, which is all wrong!!
Favourite plant, other than the Sunflower, is the Hypno-Mushroom...