Saturday, September 26, 2009

Armagged-it-on!


Welcome to my life. Day 5766. Hello my Ailing Anchovies. So Dad's been freaking out all day about Iran and how they have a nuclear weapon and how this is the beginning of World War III and whatever. I mean, if it happens, it happens. Nothing I can do about it. I guess I can write a letter to Ahmadinajad but I don't even think he reads English. Still, it kind of affects the way we look at life. Our plans and what not. Not much point continuing this education business if the world is going to end in a couple of years. Apparently all these religions and tribes all say the world is going to end in 2012. So why the hell do we continue to do shit? Let's PAAAARTY! Seriously, if the world's gonna end, I'd like to say I spent the last couple of years of it getting wasted rather than learning about the Magna friggin Carta. This kind of reminds of me of one of my favorite books, The Basketball Diaries, by Jim Carroll who died last week. R.I.P. Big Jim! Anyway, he wrote that book when he was fifteen, much as I'm writing my blog now. I think it's important to record these years. I mean, it's kind of hard to recapture that 'teen' spirit when you're all old and jaded. Jim grew up in the 60's when everyone thought the Russians were going to destroy the world. Hiroshima was still pretty fresh in everyone's mind, too. In the book, Jim becomes a junky and throws a promising basketball future away. Somehow you can't help but feel that the Russians had something to do with it. This sort of thing affects us kids. Psychologically. I was seven years old when 9/11 happened. Later on I found out that those planes flew over Indian Point. That's a nuclear power plant on the Hudson River. I don't live that far from there. It would have been the end of yours truly. Those crazy Arabs momentarily had my life in their hands. And they chose to spare it. Jim Carroll may have had the threat of annihilation but I had the genuine opportunity. Sure, I was too young to really appreciate it, but hell, it gives you perspective. You've all fucked up this planet so bad we have no idea if we even have a future at all! Maybe that's why zombie flicks strike such a chord. They're really about the end of the world. And they kind of help us laugh it off. You might say zombie flicks help us learn to stop worrying and love the bomb.




A brief history of Zombies

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word Zombie entered English circa 1871 and is derived from the Louisiana Creole or Haitian Creole zonbi, which in turn is of Bantu origin. A zonbi is a person who is believed to have died and been brought back to life without speech or free will. So, the first zombies were brought back to life through voodoo, a powerful and mysterious witchcraft.

Zombies gained notoriety as an obscure offshoot of the horror genre of the 1930s, most notably White Zombie (1932) with Bela Lugosi. Few zombies from that time remain, mostly because they didn't have a whole lot personality. There are several B-Movies of the 50's that experimented with the idea of the dead returning but it wasn't until 1968, when George Romero gave us Night Of The Living Dead that the genre as we know it really came to be. The rest, as they say, is history. Today, zombies are the pinnacle of Special Effects Make-up achievement in the movies.

Here is Mr. Romero's Site:

GEORGE ROMERO

1 comment:

  1. the nuclear age is pretty scary... Radioactive zombies may yet someday consume our flesh. As to the 2012 prophesies that is some shit that was basically made up to be sensationalist. Its all based on the mayan calendar which actually says that 2012 is the dawn of the next age...

    You should hit me up on facebook... Robbie Skye we can discuss nuclear zombies at length

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