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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