Thank you, Blogger

I think that I should acknowledge folks at Blogspot and blogger for having some kind of crazy like to an youtube video about zombies, with the song "Re: Your Brains", by Jonathan Coulton. As some of you might know, zombies are not only my favorite type of monster, but also my favorite film genre, and probably in my top five as far as general pop culture things go. I know that there is no such thing as a zombie in real life, but for some reason I think that they are the most interesting horror staples (the others being vampires, werewolves, demons, ghosts, and mummies). I think that the reason that they are so interesting to me is that they are relatively inept, but people can't seem to get along in a way that allows them to survive an outbreak of zombies. The best zombie fiction ends up with everyone dead. But the reason that everyone ends up dead in not because they couldn't fight off the zombies...it is because they couldn't band together to fight the zombies off. In Night of the Living Dead, the last man left alive in the house gets shot by a sharpshooter in the sheriff's department. In Dawn of the Dead, everything falls apart because of a selfish gang of regular people who try to raid the mall. In Day of the Dead, things go bad because the sciencey people don't get along with the militaryey ones. In Land of the Dead, things fall apart because Dennis Hopper's character is an asshole. In Shaun of the Dead, things only work out because people figure out how to put the zombies to good use without getting bitten themselves. Anyhow, the best zombie fiction is not stories about men versus monsters. It is stories about men versus men, in a time of crisis. The actual zombies are simply a backdrop of trouble that can be overcome by working together...but how many people can actually do that?