Campus of the Living Dead

Or just dealing with a lot of drunks. This is UF we’re talking about…

Last weekend, I think I was the living dead (alumni division.) Lost about 6 hours of my life. Don’t remember leaving the engineer’s pub. Don’t remember the cab ride. Don’t remember passing out. Just woke up in bed.

Gone hiking for four days in the bush. A little rain in the forecast, but tolerable. Hopefully my ankles won’t crap out on me this time.

I don’t really understand zombies. I don’t get the allure. I get vampires and such as. But zombies?

I am so proud of my land-grant almer mater.

@Benedick: I loved “She’s Not There.”

@Prommie: Not to mention Roky Ericson.

@Benedick:

Simple.

Zombies are awesome.

@Benedick:
i don’t get zombies either.
vampires? tom cruise, antonio bandaras, brad pitt:, frank langella–yes.
keifer sutherland, corey feldman–not so much.

tommiecatt, please explain the zombie allure, benedick and i are sitting at your knee. define their awesomeness.
they’re dead, and they wander around, that’s all i got.

@baked: Well… yeah! I remember reading Dracula and being really freaked by how very specific it is. At least, in my memory of it. It’s never been properly adapted that I’ve seen. They always do Jonathan in Transylvania: they never do Mina in Scarborough. It really would make a very good film. Thinks. Maybe Hrithik Roshan could be persuaded. And there could be singing and dancing. And the men’s shirts would be incapable of being buttoned. And it would rain. A lot. But only in the numbers. So that said unbuttoned shirts are plastered to wet flesh. Hmm. By God, I think I’m on to something.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: I’m willing to believe. I just don’t… get it.

@Benedick: Brains! Braaaaiiiins!

What’s not to love?

@nojo: Nothing. I get nothing. It’s like straight porn. I know I’m supposed to be turned on I just don’t know why.

@baked: @Benedick:

Zombies are awesome because they represent all of the bullshit that other people lay on you in your everyday life. They come to you with their “Be like us, do things like us, act like us”, and they are relentless- your boss, your peers, the fucking government, straight people (in my case), etc. etc. etc. Zombies are awesome because as personifications of that mindless conformity we can enjoy the way that movie heroes outwit them, hide from them successfully, shoot them, chainsaw them, and ultimately, reject them and remain themselves.

Zombies are awesome. QED.

@Benedick:

I remember Stoker describing the female vampires at the beginning of the book “going down on their knees”…wait, I will find it…

The fair girl . . . bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. . . . The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal. . . .

How fucking sexy hot must that have been to your average Victorian? Who wouldn’t want that to happen to them?

I think that, right there, is the core of the vampire’s appeal. You get to have sex, but it’s all symbolic sex, and anyway, you don’t feel guilt because, after all, you are the victim….

@baked:

By the way, I spent many a, um, productive night contemplating the boys in The Lost Boys. Talk about sexy hot!

Well, for then.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Oooh!! Yes, well (adjusts trousers) exactly. But I don’t think it’s actually about sex. I could be wrong (I know, like Shocker!!!) but I’m not sure that it is. As I remember it’s about hot Bollywood superstars trying to button their shirts in the rain. Don’t remember any of them being on their knees. Yet. But that could be another aspect of my ongoing dementia.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: I think the best thing about zombies is that you can kill them with no guilt at all, because they are already dead.

@Promnight:

There’s something to that. In a Zombie movie, you can kill your mother without guilt because, as you say, she’s a corpse anyway. Very satisfying to the id, that.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: It gets old, loving everyone and understanding all and forgiving all. You could give up the effort and become a republican, support nuking everyone who looks at us crosseyed and stroke your gun more often than your penis and dream of ways you could use it, or you can enjoy a good lighthearted zombie story and get it out, and go back to loving and forgiving etc.

@Promnight: @Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Boys, boys, I still don’t get it. It’s babies smacking mommie? (not meant in a pejorative way but merely for info. Much as one would say Sport grappling is about how all US American men are secretly lovers of Belgian cigarettes?)

@Benedick: I don’t get it either. Again. Maybe we should just enjoy a fine port while these kids get the hell off our lawn.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: There was plenty of guilt about undead-momma-shooting in Shaun. Whatchoo talkin bout?

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: @Promnight: Well, I get the metaphor a little more now with your explanations but after I watch about 5 minutes of a zombie movie, I want to kill the living. Now, vampires, that’s all about desire and transformation, men with rakishly open white shirts, tight riding breeches tearing through the gloomy forest on their wild stallions, women with beautiful decollatege, red lips, wine…..::ahem::

Zombies, not so much.

@cassandra_said: Well, there are angry revenge fantasies about getting back at the assholes in the world, and their are sex fantasies, zombie stories cater to the one, vampire stories to the other. Zombies are always revolting things you want to kill, vampires, mostly are sleek, sexy things you know are bad for you, but you can’t resist the urge to fuck them anyway. Even if you know they are just gonna suck your blood and destroy you.

@Benedick: Dude, I don’t like zombie shit either, just saying, I think I understand the appeal.

I thought that the Coppola dracula movie did okay with the sexual element, with the original story. I love that dude what played Sid in Sid and Nancy, but I get hairballs whenever I see that Keanu guy, so its a meh for me overall. Its got Tom Waits in it, which is worth a star any time.

@Promnight: sleek, sexy things you know are bad for you, but you can’t resist the urge to fuck them anyway. Even if you know they are just gonna suck your blood and destroy you.
Well, doesn’t that just describe most of my past relationships.

Aw Christ, Cyn, you beat me to it.
@Promnight: What she said.

i totally get it now. no brains, don’t know their dead, annoying.
“revolting things you want to kill” @ cassie
and i’m not pleased that i know hundreds of zombies, personally, and married 4 of them.

meant @ prommie.
cassandra…you now have me looking for vampire porn. and cyn, sorry i just spit coffee all over you.

Missed the discussion due to evening spent sharpening chainsaw and axe. Not for zombie invasion but for RML family trip to the local national forest for some (recreational) firewood cutting.

I appreciate the whole gamut of the supernatural and the mythical, from ghosts to vampires to skin walkers to dragons to bigfoot to our own local variations thereof. These things take us back to a time when the paranormal, the magical and the spirit world were closely intertwined with our daily lives. I used to love those evenings where my late aunt and uncle would visit my parents and they would drink coffee and stay up late talking, and the subject of spirits, mysterious lights, speaking animals, etc would come up. Some people yearn for God, others for the gods.