Jitterbug's Beat

Laugh If You Must.

Not only is this frickin' amazing, but come that pesky zombie apocalypse, you're going to want to be my friend once I move in to this house. What's that?  They want to eat your brains?  Look, sorry - the drawbridge is already up.

Best quote ever: "If you're prepared for the zombie apocalypse, a hurricane is just a storm."

Dem Bones Gonna Walk Around.

Seldom have I been THIS excited for a new show.  If anything pushes me to obtain cable so that I may watch, this may be it - the eagerly anticipated new series by AMC called The Walking Dead.  

The effects are, from what I can see, ever so super fantastic, complete with half-gone crawling zombie and little-girl-with-teddy-bear-power walking in that ever-so-freaky-stop-motion-ish-jerky-all-the-better-to-eat-you-with walk.  I'm also intrigued by the music.  Premiers on Halloween!  Do you have cable?  Can I come over?  And will you hold me after?

Also I have to give a shout out to the new zombie book I just read called The Reapers Are the Angels, by Alden Bell.  In fact, I also just stumbled across this book review, which is ever so succinct, I don't think I can say it better!  I picked it up on a whim because the cover drew me in, and on page two(?), I was hooked when our heroine/tormented-15-year-old survivalist was joking around with a jaw-less zombie who'd washed up in the beach by her no-longer-safe lighthouse.  I am completely inspired - not only to write more, but perhaps to get one of these for my zombie apocalypse preparedness kit.  Booyah.

Another Tale of Zombie Preparedness.

Recently an office next to my friend's in Alaska was locked down by the SWAT team - all traffic was blocked, riot gear, assault rifles... total action.  Another friend wrote in, "Don't you think your own building should be on lock down?  In case whatever it is escapes?"  Good question.  We all had theories about what it might possibly be - my first thought was "Oh dear god don't let it be zombies.  I'm not ready"  Well.  That sparked an interesting conversation because we realized, in all of our zombie preparedness musings, never once did we decide on what we'd do first. 

Molly had a good point, "But I thought our zombie battle cry was 'Always ready!'  Let's put our thinking caps on and come up with something new.  But anything but 'Oh god please don't let it be zombies.'"  Her google search turned up a really good one - an old Finish battle cry, "Fire at their balls!" 

We decided there was a downside to that battle cry, as zombies do not likely care anything about their lifeless-but-reanimated-but-still-useless balls.

Kristi found this Brazilian battle cry, "Senta a pua!"  Which means "beat a lot, with force!"  Which is good, but had a better idea to use "Remember the Alamo!"  Since, she observed, zombies are notoriously easy to confuse.  "We may not survive more than an hour," she said, "But damnit, we'll go down shouting nonsensical hilarity."

Also good to note, as Molly pointed out: If you DO wet yourself, or vomit in terror, don't think that's gonna gross out the zombies coming for you.  That stuff is like ketchup to them.

 

 

Very agreeable. Downright Zombierific.

HOW on EARTH had I not yet heard about this??? 

With quotes like this one...

"Have your ninjas left you?"
"We never had any ninjas."
"No ninjas! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without any ninjas! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your safety."
Elizabeth could hardly help smiling as she assured her that had not been the case. (126) 

...how can I not buy this book, I ask you?  The simple answer is, I can't.  I just bought a copy at Powells, damnit.

Kinemortophobia. It ain't Halloween without it.

Fun fact from K today: "Kinemortophobia: Fear of the Living Dead.  We are kinemortophobics."

Me: "I wonder if we could get any time off work for that condition."

A coworker today asked me if I'd ever heard of THIS EVENT that takes place every October in Portland.  Now I've been here for six plus years and I've never heard, nor seen anything of the sort!  But K and I agreed that with our luck, we'd stumble upon it quite by accident and ... well ... my headline would likely read "Crazy woman kills 50 in mad zombie panic before ending own life..." 

Thanks KATU for the great photos:

With zombies like- I mean friends like this...

Molly: "Kelly, I can't tell you how tempted I am to buy this for your birthday and plant it out on your patio."

Me: "OH.  MY.  GOD.  Now what I'd like to see?  How 'bout a mini one for a house plant?!?"

Molly: "Like, it's mini as it's crawling out of the potted plant but grows to full-size as it emerges?"

Me: "Now why is it that you manage to come up with horrific zombie scenarios that even I  can't imagine?"

Molly: "Ooh you'll be picturing that tonight.  I can see someone coming over to your place and asking why all your houseplants are sitting outside."

Girls Rule. Zombies Drool.

I got this email from M this morning:

"Yet another one of my irrational fears turns out to be not so crazy." With this article attached. 

Fortunately the article is about a killer robot - I was a little worried it might be about zombies.  Thus my response, and this string of emails...

Me: "M, if the title had been "zombie!" instead of "robot!" you may have heard the scream all the way up there.  Who knew the Internet could be useful for anything.  Especially plans to build a suicide robot that actually works."

M: "But you know... suicidebots could be used to battle the zombies.  We need more suicidebots."

A, on how suicidebots could be used to fight zombies: "Yes, because the robot shoots for the head.  Four rounds.  That's good.  But we'd need to modify the bullets so that they explode inside the head.  I think they have those already.  If I'm not mistaken they're called dumdums and..."

K: "The four of us in a zombie survival situation would probably do pretty well."

Yeah, so you can laugh at us if you want, and I know you will - you naysayers out there.  We're all very aware that we are plagued by oft-nonsensical-neurosis.  If you wanna know what I think (and I know you do 'cause otherwise you wouldn't be reading this blog unless you just type "suicidebot" into a Google search and it came up on its own and you were curious), I think I am fortunate to have some of the best friends in the world.  Thanks, girls.

They told her to go to rehab.

This site, and this quote, about this unfortunate woman:

"That's the thing about zombies.  They always attack when you least suspect it.  We try to stop them, but you know those zombies: stubborn, stubborn, stubborn, bite, bite, bite."

Mmmm, that's good zombie.

Some excerpts from this awesome book I'm reading right now...

"...it was bedlam, exactly what you thought the end of the world was supposed to look like.  Part of the house was burning, blood everywhere, bodies or bits of them spewed over all that expensive stuff.  I met the whore's rat dog as we were both heading for the back door.  He looked at me, I looked at him.  If it'd been a conversation, it probably woulda gone like, 'What about your master?'  'What about yours?'  'Fuck 'em.'"

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"...'You spoiled children think democracy is a god-given right.  You expect it, you demand it!  Well now you're going to get your chance to practice it.'  His exact words, stamped behind my eyelids for the rest of my life.' 

What did he mean? 

'We would be the ones to decide who would be punished.  Broken up into groups of ten, we would have to vote on which one of us was going to be executed.  And then we ... the soldiers, we would be the ones to personally murder our friends.  They rolled these little pushcarts past us.  I can still hear their creaking wheels.  They were full of stones, about the size of your hand, sharp and heavy.  Some cried  out, pleaded with us, begged like children.  Some, like Baburin, simply knelt there silently, on his knees, staring right into my face as I brought the rock down into his. 

She sighs softly, glancing over her shoulder at the one-way glass.

Brilliance.  Sheer fucking brilliance.  Conventional executions might have reinforced discipline, might have restored order from the top down, but by making us all accomplices, they held us together not just by fear, but by guilt as well.  We could have said no, could have refused and been shot ourselves, but we didn't.  We went right along with it.  We all made a conscious choice and because that choice carried such a high price, I don't think anyone ever wanted to make another one again.  We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go.  From that moment on we lived in true freedom - the freedom to point to someone else and say, They told me to do it!  It's their fault, not mine.'  The freedom, God help us, to say 'I was only following orders.'"

Because its been awhile.

Because BFF's have to stick together, Kristi sent me a Halloween article about movies that scare us the most, and my top fav zombie flick was listed - 28 Days Later.  The article ended with "...even now, I sometimes look out the window to my ground-floor apartment and think: 'there's no way those bars are strong enough to hold back the zombies.  I'm toast."

I had recommended to Kristi to watch 28 Weeks Later - the sub-par-somewhat-sequel to 28 Days.  Still, it's a zombie flick, and it's Halloween, right?  Plus there are some most exellent scenes - especially in the beginning when the human hideaways are fleeing their zombie-infested house.  The woman is upstairs and this kid decides to hide in a closet - (pppuuuullllleease, seriously, zombies - and the kid hides in the closet?  I call this "thinning the herd.")  So anyhoo, the woman goes back for the child and thereby is separated from her husband and cornered by the zombies - well the husband turned tail and ran, without them, leaving them to their surely hideous fate.  At this point in the movie, Kristi asked her boyfriend if he would leave her like that if they were in the same situation.  He very calmly looked at her and said, "Honey, if we were in the same situation, I don't think you would be doing anything that stupid.  You'd probably give the kid to the zombies."  Her response?  "He's so right.  That kid would totally be bait."

She said, and I concur: "As for children, if their little legs didn't slow us down, then surely their constant whimpering would do us in.  They're toast." 

Now neither she nor I actually have children.  So in that same situation?  You may want to watch out for yours.  Hehehehe.  Happy Halloween.