|
The Lessons of Zombie-Mania
[ONLINE.WSJ]  By any observable metric, zombies are totally hot right now. Look at movies like "Warm Bodies" and the coming "World War Z," the ratings for AMC's hit series "The Walking Dead" (12.9 million viewers for its recent season finale) and $2.5 billion in annual sales for zombie videogames. Over the past decade, between a third and a half of all zombie movies ever made have been released. A glance at Google Trends reveals that in the past few years, interest in flesh-eating ghouls has far outstripped popular enthusiasm for vampires, wizards and hobbits.I have a hard time getting fired up over zombies. Since the average life expectancy in the US is almost 78 years, wouldn't that make the average age of zombies at "birth" 78 as well? Japanese or Swiss zombies would average 82. Even having another dozen years to go before I achieve potential zombihood, I can assure you that the lurching gait of the zombie comes, not from being dead, but from arthritis. They tell me you don't get more limber the older you get, and I'm starting to think they aren't lying. Zombies can't be very good at picking their victims from a distance because their eyes went the way of all flesh before the flesh did. You never see a zombie peering at the world through bifocals, do you? Another point: approximately half of all dead people are women. Therefore approximately half of all zombies are women. Not only are they women, but they actually outlive men by a few years, so they're even older than 78. If I saw a lurching, undead little old zombie lady, I'd actually be paying more attention to helping her cross the street than I would be worrying about her eating my brain. I guess it could be a danger, assuming her dentures had been buried with her. Otherwise I guess she'd have to suck the brain out through my ear hole or something. Can zombies actually suck? Doesn't it take air? But they've stopped using their lungs for good. Smoking is also out, I guess. And playing the bassoon. And that'd be the reason they don't talk much, and they don't sing at all. I don't know why they don't go bowling. Posted by: Fred 2013-04-07 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=365668 |