Newsweek has the breaking story:

The undead have risen from their graves and invaded large portions of the east coast. Driven only by an unsatiable desire for brains, there seems to be no stopping their ruthless push forward. Residents are advised to barricade themselves in their houses and wait for further instructions. Under no circumstances should the walking dead be allowed in your house.

If you haven’t yet bought your Zombie Attack Survival Kit, now’s a good time before Walmart is overru—

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The Onion on the NYT on Foursquare:

“Foursquare is a little bit of everything — a friend-finder, a local city guide, an interactive mobile game,” said company cofounder Dennis Crowley, as if reading from the same tired script used by every one of these Web 2.0 or whatever-the-fuck-they’re-called startups. “But more than that, Foursquare is an [endless string of meaningless buzzwords we just couldn’t bring ourselves to transcribe].”

Added Crowley, “[Who gives a shit].”

Actually, we’re just jealous we can’t blithely spout geek marketing jargon to Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Edwin Newman fucked us up for life.

New Social Networking Site Changing The Way Oh, Christ, Forget It [The Onion]

Thirty years ago today, The Empire Strikes Back opened, and the world was blissfully unaware of Ewoks.

While we’re discussing the March of Technology, it seems another era has passed:

Skye Ferrante has spent six years at the Writers Room in Greenwich Village, blissfully banging away on his grandmother’s 1929 Royal typewriter.

The 37-year-old writer represented a bygone era, the last typewriter-user in a special room devoted to typists.

“In the event that there are no desks available, laptop users must make room for typists,” read a sign posted in the “Typing Room” for years.

When Ferrante returned to the Writers Room in April after an eight-month break, the sign was gone and his noisy typewriter was no longer welcome…

Executive Director Donna Brodie said staffers didn’t realize Ferrante was a typist when he rejoined. All the others had died or converted to laptops.

We saw this coming years ago when the late David Levine started drawing all his NYRB author caricatures with computers. And as much as we enjoyed the tactile pleasures of our mother’s old Royal, we can’t say we miss it.

But still: clackity-clackity-clackity-clackity-clack. That’s the sound of industry, goddammit. We bet those fussy new writers don’t even know how to drink.

Last typist refuses to switch to laptop, gets boot from Writers Room in Greenwich Village [NY Daily News, via LuxMentis]

The Chicken Meme kicks into high gear:

This site makes no guarantees regarding the correct number of chickens for your procedure. Chicken count is an estimate only based on current market value of typical live chickens and average costs of medical procedures gathered from multiple sources. Your doctor may require more chickens than specified. For your convenience, we recommend bringing at least 20% more chickens than specified to any doctor’s appointment.

We would applaud their fine work, but we’re insanely jealous, so we hate-hate-hate them for doing it first, and doing it well.

Lowden Plan Medical Chicken Calculator [via TPM]

Kos splooges over his new iPad. First comment after the post: “Hard to understand how liberals can be in favor of a draconian company that restricts freedom.” Geeks are sillier than wingnuts.

“Would a Lava Lamp work in a high-gravity environment such as Jupiter? Would the wax still rise to the surface? Would the blobs be smaller and faster? With broad disagreement on the answers, I built a large centrifuge to find out.”

We’re not sure which we love more: the lava lamp, or the tinkertoy centrifuge.

Lava Lamp Centrifuge [Neil Fraser, via Kottke]