Category Archives: Literary

life lessons from the undead

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brainsssss...brainsssss....Stephen Hawking.... 

Because hey, Britney Spears is alive and you think she can give you better advice than a gore-clotted zombie revenant, crazed with bloodlust and hungry for brains?

At least zombies like brains.

The ever-servicey Guardian has a lovely article on life lessons we can learn from zombies. (I must include a small ed. note here, to the effect that we at the ol’ raincoaster blog have, it must be admitted, even when we don’t want to, that we deleted the Zombie Blog off the blogroll, although it should be noted that this was after a long time, and with great reluctance, and we only did it because that blog was not so much undead as actually, factually, and for all intents and purposes really…well, is it indelicate to put it this way? Dead)

Man-made viruses are bad things … 

We, as humans, are fragile things

… When the character of Rhodes is spectacularly dissected by zombie hordes in Day Of The Dead, and screams “CHOKE ON ‘EM!” as they tuck into his guts, he is, in a very real sense, acknowledging his own dehumanised position in consumer culture. Yes he is.

The US military ruin it for everyone

…In Day Of The Dead, they are all racist, sexist and insane, with disastrous results. Quite where the inspiration comes from for this bumbling, disaster-prone, incompetent redneck vision of America‘s military might, is a matter for considerable debate.

Your family messes you up

No genre has reflected the increasingly obsolescence of the nuclear family unit more gleefully than the zombie movie, which posits that family life will not just mess you up, it will also attempt to eat your spleen too…

Always stay close to a helicopter pilot

No matter what goes down in any given zombie movie, you can be sure of one thing – if you haven’t got a helicopter pilot with you, then you are fubar…in the Zack Snyder remake of Dawn Of The Dead, there is no helicopter pilot anywhere to be found, and where do they all end up? Dead, that’s where. So if you are ever introduced to a helicopter pilot, be nice to them

Women are better in a crisis than men are

This may not be news to our female readers (on your side, sisters!) but zombie flicks are either keenly aware of women’s inherent stoicism, or the blokes who make zombie flicks are just trying to suck up…

Animals can be zombies too

Hmmm. Not quite sure how this one can be applied in modern society, but there are zombie monkeys in the 28 series, zombie alligators in Day Of The Dead, zombie dogs in Resident Evil, zombie spiders in Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, and in Zombie Creeping Flesh there is actually a zombie kitten. Yes, you read that correctly. So I guess what this teaches us is maybe that keeping pets is cruel. Or something.

In summary, then: stay away from pets and family members, retain a keen awareness of your own mortality and the power of science, and hang out with female non-US military-affiliated helicopter pilots. Valuable lessons, there, for all of us.

Couldn’t have put it better myself. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to drop a friendly note to my old buddy Flygrrl…

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the Living Intestine: the Juno Ledge Sea Serpent

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We’re talking Sea Monsters, people. So you know we mean business.

Now, everybody knows that Nessie‘s just a big ol’ lump o’ dinosaur, not a serpent at all. And Caddy‘s a figment of some screech-addled sailor’s story-telling impulse. And Ogopogo…well, we do not speak of Ogopogo. The ancient Fossil Shark was a shark, after all, if quite serpentine in spots and from certain angles, especially in candlelight.

But now, at last, we’ve found a genuine Sea Serpent. My shrivelled and blackened heart leaps up…

Beneath the surface of our crystal blue waters live a myriad of marine life.

Sometimes we can see them from the air — steely eyed shark congregating by the thousands, graceful stingray, gliding along the shallows.

But go deeper…

You never know what you’ll find. Just ask Jay Garbose.

“This is a first and I’ve traveled and video’ed all over the world.”

Take a look at what he found and listen to the story — it’s no fish tale.

“I was diving on Juno Ledge. That’s about a mile off shore of Juno Beach. At first I thought it was a sea cucumber although no one has ever seen one stretched 7 to 10 feet the way this one was. It’s sort of grey and putty like and very smooth and taffy like in the way it stretches. Some of my friends and I have sort of dubbed it the living intestine.”

And it is just exactly as beautiful as that description would lead one to believe. At first, I thought it was a hoax. Once I saw it moving and had observed its blundering, slow, mindless, horrible writhings, I prayed it was a hoax.

Click to view, if you dare.

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words

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from the Archive.
  Wednesday, September 04, 2002

I was in a writing course once and the instructor asked people for their favorite word. Felt like a freak once the others opened their mouths, but that’s okay, because everybody there, from the buzzcut lesbian to the grannies with their eyeglasses on decorator chains claimed that their favorite words were “love” “hope” “peace” etcetera. Ad nauseum. Mine was “wallapalooza” which is as far as I’m concerned as fine a word as you will find anywhere, although nauseum gives it a run for its money. I got it from Oprah, which is indeed a fine lineage for a word.

To his credit, the instructor’s face fell. Oh dear, you could see him think, one of THOSE groups. The cat ladies. He immediately dropped his usual references to Greek tragedy and substituted what he could remember of Agatha Christie, James Herriot, and, stretching a bit intellectually, Jane Austen. This was before Chick Lit, you understand.

I still like WALLAPALOOZA better than “hope!”

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loltrek, the lol of lols

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i can has nerdgasm?

we has tribbles and also troubles

First there were lolcats (and note, please, that I am restraining myself from using lolspk here, or even l33t for verily, I am way dignified, yo).

Then there were lolgays. and gebrils. They’re big on gebrils. We even hear there are lolgeeks…

Now, to complete the lolfecta for the grand prize, there is:

loltrek.

oh hai u want tribblz?

As if this grand conceit were not already pluperfect, please identify the source of the following vintage meme, for additional geek points and a free virtual propeller beanie:

oh hai, i has meme

and here is your soundtrack, for rocking and geeking out.

Numa, numa, baby!

calls for Cthulhu #4

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Another episode in our favorite series of (cephalo)podcasts. Here is the Great Cthulhu taking viewer’s calls and dealing with telemarketers as we all wish we could.

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