Nightmare on Pemberley Street

Everything improves when you throw zombies into the mix.

@ManchuCandidate: it has in the education field.

Zombie Persuasion

Son of RML and Mrs RML’s in car singalong song for the SoCal roadie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0ka0ig8nDQ

I believe it has something to do with dogs and gardening implements.

Posted about this back when a dear friend provided an advance copy. Quite brilliant. Expect a series of them re other classics.

This is no worse than all the other hack writers who have latched onto the world created by Jane Austen. The last time I visited Borders I looked at fiction. There are several authors with last names beginning with A who have written entire-and growing-series of books about the Pride and Prejudice characters and their descendants and ancestors and distant relatives. It was so discouraging I didn’t even make it to the B’s. To me these books are just as lame as all of the fan fiction that has grown up around science fiction and fantasy characters. The difference is that somebody is publishing this lightweight crap and it’s taking up paper and shelf space that could surely be used for something better.

The Borders trip was not a total disaster because I did find a wonderful book with all of the Sherlock Holmes short stories and The Hound of the Baskervilles. It features all of the original illustrations from “The Strand” by Sidney Paget. I donate most books to the library but this one is a keeper.

Hey, who wouldn’t want to read “The Hound of the Baskervilles and Zombies”? I smell a gold mine here!

Of course Mr. Darcy would move with savagery yet dignity…rrrowlll!

@Dave H: Agreed. Jane Austen is just that latest target for shlocky pulp that tries to ride the coat tails of original, quality works. The one exception I can think of as far as a “spin off” book that was done really well and stands on its own wthout the original source is Wide Sargasso Sea*. A crazy first wife in the attic is begging for more backstory than she got in Jane Eyre.

*Available through Stinque’s Amazon link! Buy today!

TJ/

Did I miss the mailer about Digg and the loss of the editing function? Did the loss of MSNBC beer money revenue launch us into Stinque 2.0?

Off to ride with the Amish, have a nice day!

@Nabisco: See clubhouse, secret, for Digg explanation. But I’m with you on the edit function–can we haz it back, Nojo? Don’t make me resort to unclosed tags…

@flippin eck: Second that vote for Wide Sargasso Sea. Brilliant.

@Nabisco: The editing timer is still supposed to be there, but I upgraded the software last night…

Ah: The timer itself is broken. Your superpowers should be restored now.

Nojo,

I think we could do much better. How about this:

The Stinque.com Authorized New Testament and Zombies. We could tell people to submit chapters to replace the failed non-Zombied ones and the ones we choose to use, the author gets credit in the final edition.

Could sell it as a print-on-demand book somewhere.

@Nabisco: And regarding Digg…

We used to have a “Share This” icon there — like Technorati, a holdover from CP. And like Technorati, completely useless for us. (Share This provides stats, and even on peak days it barely got used.)

So, I figured I’d play with Digg for awhile. There’s also Reddit and god knows what else out there, but Digg seems to be the headline-sharing service of choice right now, and I like to keep things simple. It’s mainly the kids who play with that stuff, but then Jon Stewart is 46, and that doesn’t stop the Daily Show from skewing young.

@FlyingChainSaw: You, sir, are brilliant.

The WikiZombie Bible. I could grab the King James text online, post it book by book, and open it up for alterations. And if I didn’t have chores I really have to do today, I’d get started right now.

@nojo: It’s a thing! Get Finn on the line. This is a holy crap item for sure. And it will get the Stinque.com persistent hate traffic from the Jesufascists!

@FlyingChainSaw: And the first thing you discover is that there are dozens of wiki software packages out there…

Wikipedia uses “MediaWiki”, and all else being equal, seems I should go with the familiar. Any geeks in the room care to comment?

@flippin eck: I have to say, I read Sherlock in Love by Sena Jeter Naslund, and thought it was pretty good. I’ve heard that Ahab’s Wife by the same author is also very good, although I haven’t read it yet. There is good derivative fiction out there, but I’m perfectly willing to believe that most of it is schlock.

@FlyingChainSaw: A terrific idea. Moses comes down from the mountain and he sees . . . . Zombies and the Golden Calf!!

Jesus jumps out of the crypt, come back to life as a ZOMBIE and starts eating people’s faces!

Let’s take this way back to the beginning. Cain kills Abel, who resurrects as the very first ZOMBIE!! God lets Abraham actually go through with the sacrifice of his son Isaac, who comes back to life as a ZOMBIE and eats Abraham’s and Sarah’s brains! David kills Goliath who becomes a giant ZOMBIE and conquers the world!

I like Lewis Black’s explanation for the Bible, “This is a wonderful story, that was told to the people in the desert, in order to distract them from the fact that they did not have air conditioning.” There’s a lot of dying that goes on in the Old Testament. Zombies seem like they’d make a big improvement.

@Dave H: Nice. Subtle. The Old Testament and New Testament and Zombies is a project whose time has come.

@nojo: @FlyingChainSaw: Awesome idea. Just look at how ripe Romans is for the picking: “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnaturalundead ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another and thereon with chiffon-robed undead. Men committed indecent acts with other men and again with rotting corpses, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

D’Oh! Edit button broke, edit button much much needed right now! Actually, the “WP Ajax Edit” window opens but never loads the text. OS X running Safari and, um, some streaming music.

@nojo: It’s all good. I’m a Chuck Taylor guy in an Air Jordan world (or whatever the kids are wearing these days).

@Nabisco: Air who? If it’s some guy older than Kobe and LeBron he’s ancient history. Michael Jordan has joined Magic and Larry and Dr. J and Jerry West and Kareem and Oscar and Wilt and George Mikan in the primordial soup of the NBA.

@Nabisco: Something weird is going on — this might tie in with strange alerts I’m getting from the server. All I know is that it was working this morning…

@FlyingChainSaw: @nojo: @Nabisco:
I got dibs on “Song of Solomon”:

The song of songs, which is Solomon’s.

Let me bite thee with the canines of my mouth: for thy blood is better than wine.

Because of the savour of thy good plasma thy name is as blood poured forth, therefore do the undead love thee.

Shoot me with your automatic weapons, we will run after thee: the vampire-king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy blood more than wine: the undead love thee.

I am dead, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

Look not upon me, because I am dead, because the sun hath not looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of their vineyards; so I ate their brains.

@Hose Manikin: This theory also provides a good explanation for why Abraham left Ur: because of the zombie plague. This is one of many things that the Bush Admin war criminals overlooked when they sent our troops in there — you can uparmor the Humvees all you want, the zombies don’t care.

@Nabisco: The doctor left a knife in the patient.

See, I was futzing with the polls this morning, since the upgrade included decimals that distracted me, and apparently in the process I saved a single extra space at the end of the program file.

Which fucked up comment editing.

Why more geeks don’t go postal is beyond me.

@FlyingChainSaw: If Jesus is a Zombie, does that mean Mary is the Virgin Zombie?

@nojo: I have no idea what that geek talk means but you amaze me.

@Hose Manikin: clap, clap, clap.

@Dave H: What about The Admiral, David Robinson? My mom saw him out shopping this week.

@nojo: And as a direct consequence, there is an extremely annoying unfixable extraneous apostrophe at the end of this comment – which will now be archived into the ages and be associated with my moniker for all time.

Thank you very much.

@Hose Manikin: Still?

Let’s try this with the civvie account…

Ah.

Gawd, some days I wish I stuck with magazine editing.

@SanFranLefty: Your Mom hangs out in the Big and Tall store?

@Dodgerblue: Motorcycle shop. I shit thee not.

@SanFranLefty: No, she is a zombie fucker. This theme will be revisited all through the Stinque.com Authorized Bible With Zombies.

@Dodgerblue: Hehehehehehehehehehe.

@FlyingChainSaw: Re: Zombie Fucker.

I assume you’re talking about the Virgin Mary and not my mom?

@SanFranLefty: Yes. I am obscene but I am nice to people’s moms.

@nojo: @Dodgerblue: you can uparmor the Humvees all you want, the zombies don’t care.
If this isn’t the tweet on Monday morning, there is no StinqueGod.

@Ewalda: Oh, yeah, I am still chuckling. DB broached a whole new frontier of wacky with that one.

@Ewalda: @FlyingChainSaw:
But there is no Stinque Gawd. Because we are ruled by a fish with feet.

While you’re both here, hey Ewalda, wanna go have lunch w/ me and Chainsaw in SF in a few weeks? HoseManikin/libertarian tool, you around for another SF lunch with mucho bottles of vino?

@SanFranLefty:
I’m in, unless there are any scheduling conflicts.

@Ewalda: 4/20

@SanFranLefty: 4-20??? hahahahaha

@Mistress Cynica:
Ironic, isn’t it how these things work out? The past two nights I was at a hotel where I was in room 419, and the adjacent room 420 had the placard ripped off and the number rewritten in magic marker on the door.

BTW, I think it’s your move on Wordscrapper.

@SanFranLefty: @Ewalda:
I’d love to, but alas – Mrs. Tool and I will be on holiday in Japan from the 14th-28th. First time there. Looking forward to it and praying for a collapse in the yen.

@SanFranLefty: we are ruled by a fish with feet.

Wait, what? I’m a Taurus.

Oh. That fish.

@Dave H: Perhaps we should partner with these guys.

@SanFranLefty: Hitler’s birthday? I try not to leave my house on that day. It’s the national holiday for building-go-boom nuts and armed psycho skinheads, and I try to avoid those folks..

@oFlyingChainSaw: “Lazarus – come forth!”

New Testament zombie.

Then there’s the body and blood of Christ from the communion service that That Really Notable Passover Dinner Some Call The Last Supper. Zombie Christ infects the world.

The Flood was all about killin’ the zombies, but some survived (probably by hanging on to the bottom of the Ark. They remain frozen on Mt Ararat, waiting for when global warming frees them of their icy bondage.)

@SanFranLefty: Sorry –with all the spam notifications on FB, the notice it was my move didn’t get through.

@redmanlaw: Ooo, ooo, the Ark story is great. Is that true?

@redmanlaw: How do we know that the ark-clingers haven’t already thawed? In this day and age, so inimical to the concept of deferred gratification, global warming rules. No self-respecting ghoul is going to stick around for what seems like a decent interval,to leave a tongue, a tittay or two, along with a tattered teddy stuck in the rapidly receding ice.

You may think that a nuee ardente is terrifying. Imagine these
horrific beings rolling, tumbling, crashing into boulders on their way down Ararat, flinging gobbets of hideously unappetizing matter in every direction! Until they pile into one another at the foot of the mountain in grisly heaps, retaining no more substance than a desiccated scarecrow.

Okay, okay! Don’t imagine it, then. I can’t fault you for that.

@EffeteHipster: That would be one memorable spring runoff. ark of the zombies (C) redmanlaw, by the way.

Then the soil is enriched by the dead flesh and the farmers in the fields below innocently plant for the spring . . .

Washington City Paper was none too impressed:

For all his heavyhanded mockery of Austen’s love story, Grahame-Smith’s version still proceeds automatically to a happy ending concerned only with married bliss, and not at all with consumption of human flesh.

Also, check out their main page. Look a little familiar to anyone?