Zombies R Us.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

- Walt Kelley, Pogo

You are now one of the living dead! Enjoy!

- Zombieplace.com zombie makeup tutorial.

It has literally been decades since I last participated in Hallowe'en, but due to the gentle but threatening pressure being exerted by Suki, our company's "employee engagement" manager, I've decided that a wise man would show up next Friday wearing something other than the usual casual garb allowed at the end of the week.

But wearing what, exactly?  After a bit of careful consideration, I decided that going as a zombie was probably the simplest option.  After all, zombies are just people, albeit dead ones, and as such are unhampered by silliness like fairy wings, clown shoes or ungainly mascot heads.  When you think about it, a zombie costume is basically comprised of torn clothing, bloodstains, and decaying flesh - seems simple enough.

The Internet is thick with helpful suggestions on how to look like a zombie, to the point that a neutral observer might be concerned about our society as whole, this can't be healthy.  One of those helpful suggestions is that as creatures that have risen from the grave, many zombies are actually quite well dressed.  After all, no one ever get buried in t-shirt and jeans.  (Although now that it's come to my awareness, I may put something in my will about that...)  This doesn't rule out casual zombie-wear, due to the "tell two friends" aspect of zombie creation-by-consumption, but it provides a good starting point.

In preparation, I did some simple prosthetic testing during the week, and frankly I was astonished at the ease with which white glue and toilet paper can be converted into a fairly ghastly head wound.  I also have ambitious plans to take advantage of an existing surgical depression in my skull to inset a piece of visible bone (white cardboard or plastic) with torn skin flaps around it.  I'm even planning to shave off my beard and mustache for the event - much easier to do makeup that way.
 
So out I went this afternoon to do shopping for my costume.  I purchased some green, black and white makeup, so I can dull down and brighten up the green for decaying flesh with shadows and highlights as necessary, I’ve got some fake blood for the wounds, and for around the mouth and on the clothes, and I managed to walk into the Salvation Army and randomly pick a $20 tan suit* off the rack that actually fits me just about perfectly.  In fact, if there weren’t a couple of stains on it, I’d be able to wear it to work on Thursday instead of Friday.  However, since there are some existing marks on the fabric, I can sacrifice it to the holiday with a clear conscience – tear one sleeve off short, that sort of thing.  I also purchased a dental appliance for that snaggly zombie look.

And there we are - wish me luck.  I need to do some prep work over the next five days, make some fake skin for the head wounds, distress my suit and so on, and I'll certainly be posting some photos of the results next weekend.  Now if I can just find those glasses with the one shattered lens that I've been hanging onto for years to use as a prop...

- Sid

* It had to be a tan suit because blood and grave dirt and so on wouldn’t show up as well on black, you see. Planning, it's all planning.

I don't think that Mars would make bail, either.

Regarding the missile shutdown incidents, my opinion, their opinion, is that whoever are aboard these craft are sending a signal, to both Washington and Moscow among others, that we are playing with fire - that the possession and use of nuclear weapons potentially threatens the human race and the integrity of the planetary environment.

Robert Hastings, UFO Researcher - press conference, Sept. 27, 2010

How do you know that we are not already living amongst monsters or aliens disguised as "normal" people? Whom would you call: Ghostbusters or Men In Black?

The Smith Machine, blog comment.

 Sigh...and here we go again.

In case you should decide to skip the video link above, it features retired US armed forces personnel reporting incidents involving UFOs that caused shutdowns and equipment failures at atomic/nuclear testing and missile storage sites.  Sadly, as per my previous comments regarding this sort of thing, there seems to be a dearth of hard evidence - in fact, at least a couple of the officers featured in the press conference seem to be relying on the reports of their subordinates rather than first hand experience.

Okay, fine.  Let's say, for the sake of argument, that aliens are visiting Earth on a regular basis.  And, again, sake of argument, let's say that in a display of intergalactic brotherhood, or sentient-being-hood or whatever, they decide that they should send a signal to Washington and whomever else that nuclear weapons are bad.  They do this by causing sporadic problems at US military bases - perhaps Russian military bases too, but we only have the American reports to work from in this case.

If alien visitors have both the desire and the ability to cause shutdowns of nuclear weapons, why bother restricting themselves to intermittent difficulties?  Perhaps I should be more grateful to Mr. Hastings for his role as Daniel in the interpretation of this extraterrestrial mene mene tekel upharsin, but why would the aliens not shut down all the nuclear weapons everywhere?  If they've become sufficiently interested in our world that they feel that a message should be sent to the various nuclear-capable powers, they should realize that sporadic interventions at random sites is not the most reliable way to send that message if they really want to get a serious response.

Expatriot Canadian S. M. Stirling is writing a series of books set in a world that has somehow been pushed back to a medieval equivalent by a sudden, mysterious Change that has altered the fundamental nature of physics:  gasoline won't burn, electricity can't be generated, even steam engines fail to operate.  So far in the series, the reason for the Change hasn't been explained, but it's certainly a complete solution to the potential of destroying "the integrity of the planetary environment" with nuclear weapons.  A similar approach by the aliens who have been haphazardly shutting down missiles in silos would make World War Three much less of a concern for us than making sure we didn't freeze or starve during the winter months.

The funny thing is that the Men In Black scenario almost makes sense.  It's a lot easier for me to believe that aliens who had integrated themselves into our society as individuals might take independent action in regards to the possibility of a thermonuclear holocaust.  It would be the alien version of, I don't know, impulsively turning the hose on those loudly inebriated neighbours who are trying to light the barbecue at 3:00 AM, instead of calling the fire department.  As such, it would have the same sort of spur-of-the-moment feel as a response to the problem - and it might well be just the thing to keep the neighbourhood from going up in flames.

And on that basis, things could have been a lot worse.  After all, these theoretical aliens-in-residence could have decided to just call the cops on us and let them sort it out - do we really want to find out what the planetary equivalent of a night in the drunk tank might be?

- Sid

P.S. Should you be interested in a more complete explanation of Mr. Hasting's position, you are welcome to visit his web site: http://www.ufohastings.com.

Monsters.

There have been times in recent years when I've felt that I've somehow slipped across the line into some kind of shadow world*, a world that crosses the border into the sort of fantasy existence that's dominated my reading habits for the last 40 years.

The result?  Zombies block the downtown streets, my niece is apparently a part-time vampire, a good friend tells me in apparent earnest that she's a space alien, coffee shops complain about extra-terrestrial influences,  the Internet attempts to communicate with me via broken English, and then there's things like this:

Yes, monsters.  A little research reveals that it's guerilla promo for a movie coming out in October that echoes District 9's concept of an unexpected alien incursion - and, in the same fashion that District 9 resonates off its South African location, the extraterrestrial presence of Monsters is in Mexico. However, in the case of the sign above, there's another layer of (perhaps) unplanned irony. 

I took that picture near my workplace in Vancouver, about a block from the center of the infamous East Hastings slums, where it's not uncommon to see people unconscious on the sidewalks or wandering in the middle of the street in a state of drug-induced dementia, screaming psychotically at the sky or weeping uncontrollably in the park.

Am I saying that these people are monsters?  Although it sounds lacking in compassion, in some ways perhaps they are - there's certainly a strong resemblance to the traditional portrayal of zombies, at least. The woman I saw last week with her pants around her knees and her rear end out in traffic as she urinated into the gutter is an unfortunate but ideal example - someone who has so abandoned any remnant of self-respect that they would no longer even find it necessary to seek out an alley or a corner out of sight to perform the more fundamental bodily functions.

Imagine a situation involving a drug that twisted and warped people's bodies to the same extent that crack seems to have destroyed the minds of some of these people. In that case, there would indeed be a necessity for warning signs for monsters.

Hmmm - perhaps the basis for a fantasy novel...

- Sid

* "Twilight zone" might be more apt, but obviously there are copyright issues.