re: your brains (Zombiesque!)

My dear, bebearded friend Laszlo Xalieri, who formerly guest-starred in this textual/pixelated adventure of mine as a lecturer at the Atlanta Zombie Symposium, has a story in a newly published book of short fictions written from zombies' points of view.



It's called Zombiesque, and it's available on Amazon for only $7.99, and you need something new to read. (You always need something new to read. No matter how many unread books you already have cluttering your bookshelves/other horizontal home surface areas. Don't argue, you'll risk giving me a catastrophic paradigm shift proportionate to the number of pages in all of my unread books combined.)

consumerism WOW it's december already

It's time, friends and colleagues, for a precociously holiday-themed edition of Consumerism Wow! Fellow Awesomancer and t-shirt lover Adam P. Knave and I have teamed up again to tell you about why we like some things -- not just t-shirts, this time! -- that we think you will like, too.

Part 1 of this veritable thing-liking extravaganza can be found here, on Adam's blog. Click through if you'd like to see some of the things that I think you should consider purchasing, along with Adam's completely vaguely super-incorrect reasons for why I think so. The following is Part 2: Adam's picks, and my explanations for why he likes them! Perhaps you should read about them now?


THINGY #1

Lauren: Oh man! Someone illustrated that fanfic you wrote and put the picture on a t-shirt? Is there a picture on the back of you as the zombie leader of the zombie-Harlem Globetrotters?

Adam: No there isn't and I'm rather ups... HEY! Nice try but you won't get me to admit my zombie-doo fanfic writing ways THAT easily!


THINGY #2

Lauren: Branding for fictional corporations is the best kind of branding, 'cause you don't have to feel guilty about how they treat their employees or source their materials 'cause they're all fictional. Also, you can't stop dreaming about electric sheep. And Rutger Hauer.

Adam: Rutger Hauer is a fine, fine looking man. You know, I wonder how Blade-Doo-Runner would go...


THINGY #3

Lauren: You want to remind people that real vampires can sparkle and be adorable if they damn well want to.

Adam: Exactly. Except for the sparkly bit. And the adorable bit. Also the vampire bit, if you want to be picky. I mean... yeah. But otherwise? Spot on!


THINGY #4

Lauren: You're just hoping that people will do weird shit around you so that you can turn them into characters and plot devices in your writing.

Adam: I don't need them to do anything special for that. No I just want the cover. The more people out there causing trouble the less my own schemes will be noticed and stopped. I just want to use society as a looky loo. Is that so wrong?


THINGY #5

Lauren: Aww, this one is actually really sweet. Unless by “things” you mean “more post-zombie-apocalyptic Scooby Doo self-insertion fanfiction.”

Adam: Why would I mean that? I mean, who would ever... what makes you think that? YOU CAN'T PROVE ANYTHING, LAUREN!


THINGY #6

Lauren: I don't care why you want this. If you saved all of your NES and Genesis came cartridges, and all that stands between me and the most badass throwdown marathon of Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers and Bubble Bobble is the purchase of this gadget and a plane ticket, I'm coming to your apartment in 3 to 5 processing & shipping days.

Adam: I was thinking of buying a few of my old carts back, actually. Yer on, Spanky!


THINGY #7

Lauren: They didn't have a Duck Dodgers statuette?

Adam: Oh, see, now that's just mean, that is. It's Buck! The original space badass! We don't mock Buck, we just don't. That's like mocking the baby Jeebus.


THINGY #8

Lauren: Okay clearly this is a joke shirt 'cause we've already discussed that if you could travel back in time, you'd be wearing really sleek suits and drinking martinis in the 60's, not hanging out here & now wearing t-shirts. You want this shirt so you can throw rival time travelers off your space-time scent.

Adam: Well that was the plan until you ruined it! If it wasn't for you and those zombie kids!


THINGY #9

Lauren: Shiny bits of plastic to taunt your kitty with from a high-standing shelf! Before you make this purchase, I recommend making sure that kitty hasn't built a jetpack based on the design from that Buck Rogers statuette.

Adam: My cat could not use a jetpack. She has no thumbs. I gave her one, to make sure, and she just licked it and sat on it. She has no interest in flying.


THINGY #10

Lauren: Oh, nevermind, with this you will have all the protection your shiny bits of plastic will need from evil bejetpacked kitty. Kitty will be easily subdued! This is a titanium folding kitty-incapacitation system! PLUS it will be a handy tool for eating with when I serve you some delicious homemade kittypop tarts that are too fresh and hot to pick up!

Adam: Can we please do a comic - Jetpack Kitty vs The Spork? Like, serious please? C'mon. No, wait, why are you running away, Lauren? Was it something I said?


And other than posting this evidence of why she fled, Lauren the grammarmonkey was never seen nor heard from again. Happy Consumer Holidays, folks!

zombie symposium video +ODST

For anyone who missed it (or who wants to create a greatest hits edit or fan music video*), the entirety of the Atlanta Zombie Symposium is available for watching on the vast and multitudinous Intarwebs! Laszlo posted nice links to all of the video bits on one of his online soapboxes, SRF Heavy Industries, which you should be reading anyway.


Aaaand now back to Halo: ODST. Most hilarious voice cast ever. No I won't tell you who, you have to play the game. I'm digging the audio backstory pieces -- they remind me of ilovebees, which was a promotional alternate-reality game for Halo 2 with a component of audio drama and which I have huge nostalgia for. Also, the pistol has a scope like in the first Halo! Oh how I missed being cheap with the pistol.



* PLS DO THIS NAO.

following up

So that Zombie Symposium I went to last weekend was pretty awesome! I snapped a few pictures with my phone's camera (which you can follow the adventures of at Twitpic/grammarmonkey):






The intrepid panel: Stan Woodard, Diane Diakite, Andrea Wood, and Laszlo Xalieri.




Stan was the panel leader. Diane's discussion was about Haitian and West African religious beliefs about and social purposes for zombification (fascinating stuff, I really hope she publishes a book about this). Andrea covered the American pop culturization of these zombie traditions through a mixing of sensationalized Caribbean travel brochures and Western stories of the undead in Hollywood, and Laszlo talked about natural occurrences of zombification in insects, network technology, business, and etc. (if you buy him coffee or beer, he'll be glad to expound on these further). I missed the films & boozin' legs of the day 'cause I had some serious sitting around on my butt to do that evening.

the littlest zombie

Things that maybe you're not thinking about when you're trying to make a relatively healthy banana bread-based, raspberry-filled, red crab-themed birthday cake for your just-turned-one-year-old daughter to have a traditional cakeSMASH photo-op with:

• Red food coloring is incredibly insidious for something that's water soluble. Sure it'll wash off, but first it will get everywhere.


• Banana bread has a sort of lumpy, spongey texture. Like zombie-flick flesh.


• Crushed raspberries have a definitely lumpy, clumpy texture. Like zombie-flick brains.


• Giving your generally low-sugar'd child free reign to eat cake is like giving a tiny lady who doesn't drink often a pint of hunch punch: drunkenness will ensue.


• If Lauren is the photographer, she'll think the carnage is hilarious.

From Aurora's First Birthday Party

Glad I could be part of your bash, Aurora. Happy birthday! And congratulations to your mom & dad for making it through your first year with their brains intact.