Opa, motherfucker

OH DAMN I lost the post-a-day challenge, the challenge that I myself lovingly hand-crafted, all due to greasy food. I meant to hammer out something last night but instead ate a cheeseburger and fries even though a place with both "tacos" and "tequila" in the name had just opened across the street, then played video games with Sarah.

 

One thing I meant to write about was this: a dream in which I blew off an obligation involving the President to go shoot zombies in the woods with Dave.

 

"Shoot zombies" in this instance does not mean "explore homoerotic feelings."

 

DAVE.

 

Don't get excited.

 

Speaking of zombies: Amazon just emailed me this list of recommended reading, and a full half of the books listed are zombie-related. These include

 

Son of Man

The Dead Walk Diaries

Headshot Quartet (points for the title)

Dying to Live

 

What the fuck? I mean, I know that there was a major zombie streak in pop culture, but I thought it was tapering off by now. Is it always the fate of dinosaur media to produce topical fare only after the topic has lost timeliness? Or are the undead still major players in modern culture?

 

I also say a hearty "What the fuck?" because in 2004, before all this brain eating bullshit really went down, I went on a fairly involved (at my desk) search for zombie fiction, thinking, hot damn, modern letters are bloated with the bloody and bloodless footprints of vampires, so surely there's some quality zombie fic. And was there? Only the slightest trace. The quietest shamble in the graveyard bushes, you might say. In the end the search turned up one horror anthology, 999 (http://www.amazon.com/999-Twenty-nine-Original-Horror-Suspense/dp/0380805189), which despite the goofy conceit of its title, contained a killer zombie story set in a world kind of like the one at the end of Shaun of the Dead, where zombies are pressed into menial service. There's a lovely creepy scene with a zombie prostitute. It never devolves into camp, either, despite the goofiness of the premise.

 

(There's also a really nice piece—maybe by the same author, maybe even part of the same story, it's been too long for me to remember properly, featuring a sculptor trying to recreate Rasputin's head out of clay, a very meticulous job, all anatomy, and one which results in the vivification of the golem-head and its subsequent mystical summoning of a following; in fact, a quick look over the customer reviews at Amazon remind me that yes, in fact, these are part of the same piece, "Amerikanski Dead at the Moscow Morgue" by Kim Newman.)

 

(So in other words, you should check out this anthology even though it's a little old now.)

 

So for all that, there was little else to draw on. And then a few years later there was another anthology, this was called something blatant like The Undead, which I bought online, and which billed itself as all zombies, all the time, baby, and which was almost entirely disappointing both in its authors' imagination and in their abilities to craft anything like a coherent and engaging story.

 

And that was it. The well was dry. Now Amazon is hemorrhaging zombie writing out of every orifice.