Easter at Chez Mungowitz

So Mungo is finally home for a few days before his travels bring him to Texas and other exotic locales, and here is how he has chosen to spend his Easter Sunday:

If you say "it looks like he's preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse", you'd be right. Batteries, bleach, powdered milk and mustard (don't ask), canned food................

Looks like Mungo has seen America, and he is not amused!

Hat tip to the LMM

Zombies and Shot-Blocking

I always thought Manute Bol was a shot blocker who looked like a zombie. (No, that's not photo-shopped).  But perhaps he was a zombie who looked like a shot blocker? (In fairness, Bol was also a first-rate human being). But on to the research question:


Aggressive Acts Increase Commitment to New Groups: Zombie Attacks and Blocked Shots 

Negin Toosi, E.J. Masicampo & Nalini Ambady 
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming 

Abstract: How do individuals who switch between opposing sides develop a sense of commitment to their new groups? Study 1 examined these dynamics in a live-action tag game known as Humans versus Zombies, in which players transitioned from being Human to being Zombie, thus turning against their former fellow Humans. Study 2 examined data from professional basketball players in the National Basketball Association who moved to a new team and had to play against their former team. Aggressive acts against former group members in these competitive settings determined commitment to the new group above and beyond other factors. Aggressive acts against former teammates, such as simulated killing (Study 1) and blocked shots (Study 2), promoted more positive self-reported attitudes toward the new group (Study 1) and more collaboration with new group members in the form of assists (Study 2). 

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Is There ANYTHING That Could Persuade These People BHO is a Bad President?

This is funny enough, I suppose.  But I do wonder if all the people who said, "Obama has to wait until after the election.  Then....THEN he'll start doing the right thing!" still believe that.  At some point, you have to recognize that OBAMA is the zombie.


 
Thanks to Kevin Lewis

Zombie Apocalypse: The Warning

A solid prank.  Problem:  You will want pancakes.

The video:

Nod to Angry Alex

After the Zombie Apocalypse: Estate Tax Implications

While members of our do-nothing Congress bicker, we are faced with a real problem:  What are the estate tax implications of the zombie apocalypse?

I mean, are they dead, or undead?  Do lost body parts count as "partially included assets," or something else?  And how do you figure the unified credit if I blow up my zombie uncle's head, and then get the gold teeth?  Are those heritable, or are they gifts?  The IRS has no answers.  And you can't very well ask your accountant, if he looks like this:

But Professor Chodorow has answers.

With thanks to the LMM, who doens't really like zombies very much.

Zombie Apocalypse

As Angry Alex points out, "Best. Military. Exercise. Ever."

Zombie Apocalypse.

A VIP and his personal detail are trapped in a village, surrounded by zombies when a bomb explodes. The VIP is wounded and his team must move through the town while dodging bullets and shooting back at the invading zombies. At one point, some members of the team are bit by zombies and must be taken to a field medical facility for decontamination and treatment.

"No one knows what the zombies will do in our scenario, but quite frankly no one knows what a terrorist will do," Barker said. "If a law enforcement officer sees a zombie and says, `Freeze, get your hands in the air!' What's the zombie going to do? He's going to moan at you. If someone on PCP or some other psychotic drug is told that, the truth is he's not going to react to you."

The keynote speaker beforehand will be a retired top spook-- former CIA Director Michael Hayden.

"No doubt when a zombie apocalypse occurs, it's going to be a federal incident, so we're making it happen," Barker said. Since word got out about the exercise, they've had calls from "every whack job in the world" about whether the U.S. government is really preparing for a zombie event.

Called "Zombie Apocalypse," the exercise follows the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's campaign launched last year that urged Americans to get ready for a zombie apocalypse, as part of a catchy, public health message about the importance of emergency preparedness.

If you want to stock up on your own...

Happy All Hallows Eve!

Look out Tyler, in Zimbabwe, Zombies have voting rights!

Yesterday, in a classic blog post, when asked to choose an anti-zombie weapon, Tyler chose "the rule of law" (second choice was "anti-zombie constitutional amendment"!!!!).

Grim news for him comes today from Zimbabwe where it is reported that "nearly 1/3 of Zimbabwe's voters are already dead" (this of course explains why Mugabe is still in power after 275 years, he's a Zombie)!!

So under PR, they'd be in a coalition government controlling several ministries!

Plus, during elections, they can eat the brains of non-Zombie voters while waiting to exercise their franchise.

How's that rule of law gonna save you Tyler, when Zombies vote?

Surviving Halloween

Our friends at Popehat have produced a list of 25 tips to help you stay alive in "a world teeming with serial killers, aliens that aren’t interested in bringing peace to mankind, backwoods cannibals, and corpses that hunger for the flesh of the living".

My favorite is #19.

Houston, we have an idiot!

Markets in everything: Santeria edition

Looking for a great investment vehicle? Consider the human skull.

In 2007, UPI reported that, in Venezuela, practitioners of "black magic" were robbing graves for human bones and that skulls were selling for $300!

Two years later, the NY Times reports that the pace of Venezuelan grave robbing has accelerated and a skull now goes for $2000!

People, that is an average annual return of over 250%!

The Times has also upgraded the robbers from practitioners of "black magic" to adherents of a religion (transplanted from Cuba) called "Palo" (though this source perpetuates the "black magic" label)

More Zombie Cartoons from Bizarro

(Credit: Bizarro!)

I'm really quite sick, feeling terrible.

So, I am going to go see "Zombieland," which will cheer me greatly.

A Fine Zombie Cartoon From Bizarro

The Lovely Ms. Mungowitz saved this for me, in the funnies. And now I share it with YOU.


And this is not a bad followup, by the way.

Zombie Movies: An Appreciation of Slow

Had dinner Friday night l'etoile, here in Charlottesville. (Yes, I had the sweetmeats. Yum....lamb balls). Since Loren Lomasky was paying, we all did serious work in terms of wine and food. (Thanks Loren! And, to be fair, your "work" was more serious than any of ours. Well done, grabbing the full wine bottle from the waiter's hand and hugging to yourself, so it became, as you shrieked, "Mine! My baby. Mine.")

Anyway, at dinner we had the sort of excellent analytic conversation that often happens when you get academics and terrific wine together. I happened to be sitting across from Garrett Fagan, a truly capital fellow, a classicist from Ireland, now at Penn State. Kudos also to Ben P and Rachana K, though I won't "out" them completely.

Here is the question: what makes for a great zombie movie? What are the classes of zombie movies, and how are they distinguished from other similar, but non-zombie, movies? Dr. Fagan was clearly the smartest person at the table, since his knowledge of zombies revealed a deeply troubled mind, but the classification scheme we all came up with is important enough to share.

1. Most movies where baddie status is irrevocably conferred by being bitten by a baddie are NOT zombie movies. Obviously, this is true for vampire and werewolf movies (if a vampire bites you, you become a vampire, not a zombie), but it is even true for "almost zombie" movies like "28 Days Later." The point is that 28 Days Later, though a scary movie where the baddies all want to bite the remaining people, is simply not a zombie movie. Nonetheless, any true zombie movies must have biting-baddies. Necessary but not sufficient. That's the conclusion of the assembled worthies.

2. All true zombie movies require putrefaction, and severe mutilation of the zombie bodies. The advantage of this, in addition to be being visually horrifying, is that it introduces idiosyncratic locomotion and gestures. One zombie might be pulling himself along, because his legs are gone. Another limps and shuffles in a rotation way, because all the flesh is gone from one leg, and the opposite shoulder has been torn off, so that he has trouble keeping balance. Further character differentiation occurs because, though putrefaction occurs at a constant rate, the start time for putrefaction is the "death" of the human the zombie used to be. Thus, some zombies are relatively fresh and only slightly sour-smelling. Others are truly rotten, with pieces falling off just because the worms have crawled in, the worms have crawled out, the worms have played pinochle in his snout.

3. In all true zombie movies, the zombies are slow. No, don't argue, you are wrong. ZOMBIES. ARE. SLOW. There are scary, putrid sickness-acquired-by- biting-afflicted things in movies that are not zombies, because they are fast. Saying "I like fast zombies" is like saying "Zima is my favorite beer." Now, you are welcome to like Zima.^1 But Zima is not beer. Our table-jury was split on the question of whether slow thinking was sufficient. Garrett and I held out for the pure "slow means slow!" position, based on #2 above. How could something with no flesh below the knee be fast? Please. And, of course, since my authority is limited on these questions of...well, authority, I appeal to a real authority, none other than Simon Pegg, of "Shaun of the Dead" fame, who wrote this.

4. In the best zombie movies (and, yes, Day of the Dead, the 1985 Romero version, is THE best zombie movie, and if you don't think so you are likely not enough of a zombie fan to have read this far in the first place) actually teach you something about zombies.
a. What do they want? (they want to bite and eat human flesh)
b. Will other kinds of flesh satisfy, or at least distract them? (no. dead animals, pieces of dead humans, or even live animals will not distract zombies in the least. They want living human flesh, and they are drawn irresistably, though slowly, to human flesh.)
c. Does human flesh somehow sustain, or strengthen, zombies? In the strictest sense, no. Zombies do not digest, or derive satisfaction, or even really notice, human flesh. Zombies simply MUST draw close and bite. That's how they roll. Or shuffle.

5. Edged weapons, rocks, even physical blows....all of these are NOT part of the true zombie arsenal, though many of these will be used by the doomed human defenders. A real zombie movie is absolutely obliged to restrict its horror to exactly one kind of attack: overwhelming (in fact, limitless) numbers of slow-moving, silent, putrefying zombies shuffle toward the victim. The victim kills thousands, using every weapon, garden shears, or table leg that is close to hand. But ultimately the victim is overwhelmed, and is consumed or becomes a zombie (either outcome, after a spirited discussion at table, was deemed acceptable.)

An excellent review of some more serious literature on zombie movies here.

FURTHER READING, for newbies:
Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture, by Annalee Newitz, Durham: Duke University Press, 183 pages, $21.95
Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema, by Jamie Russell, Surrey: FAB Press, 309 pages, $29.95
The Dominion of the Dead, by Robert Pogue Harrison, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 159 pages, $14
World War Z, by Max Brooks, New York: Random House, $14.95
Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks, New York: Random House, $17.00 (to be published in early October!)

LAGNIAPPE: Red Dawn is NOT a zombie movie. It is one of the most unintentionally hilarious movies ever made, and it was Patrick Swayze's second movie (1 was "Outsiders"). But the band of renegade teenagers are MUCH too stupid to be real zombies. And zombies cannot shout, "WOLVERINES!" (WOW! Jennifer Grey, or "Baby" from Dirty Dancing, was also in Red Dawn. I did not know that...And, yes, Dirty Dancing WAS in fact a zombie movie.)

^1: I lied. No, you aren't.

UPDATE: Thanks to the commenter for pointing out I am an idiot, and linked Zima when I said "Day of the Dead." But, I submit that "Zimaroll" has considerable potential, now that "Rickrolling" is such a tired cliche. (No, I will not link a Rickroll)

UPDATE II: This, in commments, from Alex Zarley: An excellent new zombie movie, although it is in Greek (doesnt really take anything away from movie because dialogue isnt that essential in them), is to kako (the evil). The sequel, Evil in the time of heroes, a zombie movie that takes place in ancient greece starring billy zane, is due for release in Greece October 1. Alex: You are SO RIGHT! So, watch for To Kako II.