Zombies are the new vampires...

I CAN HAZ ZOMBIE?

Today, there's so much news of a certain kind that it's hard to understand how the human race has been saved from extinction. This heaving plethora of Bad Ideas has made me wonder if only a tiny minority of people have rotten ideas but a lot of flashy publicity, or if a great number of us are lumbering around harboring disastrous thoughts, but keeping our sucky notions to ourselves. And what saves us? Are there just a few smart people in the avant garde who warn us not to have sex with couches ? (...about which, more later.) Or does the phenomenon of the great hive brain take over, suggesting en mass that we not make a raincoat from our own hair? Make A-list movies starring zombies? Have sex with a church banister?

Greater minds than mine are surely on this. At least I hope so.

Today I read that no less a publication than Time magazine is declaring that our love of vampires is so last year. Zombies are the new biggie. Diablo Cody, she of Juno scriptwriting fame, is hard at work on a zombie flick, so that settles it. My husband and I had an intense discussion and agreed that Diablo Cody is full of shit, as is anyone who'd switch from vampire love to the undead. For one thing, my hub and I noted, zombies can't carry a picture. Hell, they can't even play second bananas. The best you can hope from zombies is background. As a group, they can stagger through New York City, ripping the arms off passers-by and gnawing entrails on the sidewalks, but that's about it. Plus, they have no fashion sense, chunks of them are always dropping off, and they smell godawful. Whereas vampires generally look pretty terrific, if you don't mind that deathly bluish-pale skin. They wear great clothes, can fly through the air, nibble on hot-looking humans and live forever. What's not to like?

Purusing my news sources, I've also come across an account of a Romanian woman who has woven an entire wardrobe from her own hair. She notes proudly, “I have nine items – a hat, a shawl, a skirt, a blouse, a raincoat, a purse, a handbag and a pair of gloves." She went on to say, "I did this because I wanted to show how practical human hair is. The clothes are warm and comfortable – and the materials are free.” She's right as far as she goes, but I think she's a little disingenuous in overlooking the yuck factor.

Marching on, last I came across a sexual preference I hadn't known anything about. Not that I'm a drooling libertine, but I fancy I'm as worldly as the next, however I'd never run across objectum sexuality. OS people, as they prefer to be called, are not in least attracted to people, squirrels, or blow-up dolls. Rather, they fall in love with fences, couches and roller-coasters and feel that the object of their desire reciprocates through telepathic communication. The only real difference between male and female OSers, is that men mostly want to have sex with their La-Z-Boy recliner, whereas the women want to marry it.

So what's your preference today? Zombies or vampires?

Or that sexy microwave oven?

The twitter tweets...

Tweety Deconstructed 2009

From time to time, I work with a management consultant on a book about relationships. He's the author and I edit, although he generously allows me to toss in my two pennies on the content. We've hit a disagreement, though, in what constitutes a relationship. He maintains a relationship is a physical I am here and so are you relationship. I say a relationship can exist between a couple of bloggers, Tweeters, or Facebookers, one in New Jersey and one in Kathmandu.

Today, on the XX blog in Slate magazine, the subject of Twitter, Facebook and the like arose:

An Oxford neuroscientist is suggesting that social networking and the hours kids spend doing it is rewiring their brains so that we are at risk of raising a generation of solipsists. Dr. Susan Greenfield fears this exposure is permanently "infantalizing" young brains, leaving them with truncated attention spans and the inability to interact face-to-face with other human beings...

The blog goes on to say: but wasn't it ever so? When TV was adopted in a mass fashion, the this-will-rot-your-brain arguments quickly switched from comic books to television, only to switch again when rock n' roll was popularized. Actually, you can trudge back through all of human history and find lots of this-will-rot-your-brain opinions. When (thanks to the Van Eyck brothers) oil painting supplanted tempera as the most widespread artistic medium, rot-your-brain groans were heard throughout Europe. Now, with oils, any dope could paint, the opinionmeisters declared. After the printing press was developed the same brand of moaning was heard: books would destroy all need for the human memory. But I think at the bottom of all rot-your-brain statements is the notion that anyone can do it, whatever the it may be. And ::poof:: goes the need for mastery or artistry. Or that enjoyable sense of superiority.

And so, there's now a forest of experts announcing that since the roiling dumb-butt masses can now Tweet, email, or IM at will, there's no need for the Rude Generation to do much except punch out their ur-messages of marginal interest: My mom sux. Urz 2? WTF?

As one who is more comfortable writing than speaking, I greeted email with unqualified delight, and blogging with an even bigger gush of welcome. Twitter? Not so much. The Tweeting I do is more in the spirit of experimentation, wondering WTF the big deal is in recording one's most trivial thoughts and actions. I never Tweet about my non-belief in original sin, say, or the possibilities of free will, or my fictional use of an unreliable narrator. My Tweets are always uninspired blurbs about small dull chores: Sorting my husband's sox.

Then too, every so often I get a post from some stranger announcing that they are now "following" my Tweets. Their reasons for doing so are completely opaque to me, but I will note that many of them are writers engaged in Goth, vampire and/or zombie fiction...a factoid I avoid thinking about. Their interest would seem akin to cyberstalking, except that they have no further interest in me except as another being to bombard with their specific dwarfish thoughts: Watching a True Blood rerun. How-how!

But then, Twitter-wise, maybe I just don't get it. Any day now, one of my zombie-loving-Goth-writing-graphic-novel-reading followers will surely Tweet me:

Tweeting. Ur doin it wrong.