Still Can’t Brain Today
Posted on October 19, 2009 Posted by John Scalzi 38 Comments
Man, some days are just like that. So in lieu of actual brain thought thingies, two notes and a totally deep thought.
* Over at Omnivoracious, Jeff VanderMeer interviews Bill Schafer, publisher at Subterranean Press. I get mentioned in passing, and the old cover of The God Engines gets shown off.
* Hey, you know where I’m going to be on Friday? Cleveland, that’s where. And what will I be doing there? I’ll be here, to see these guys. You should go too. Here’s where you can buy tickets.
* And now your totally deep thought: Are there such things as ghost zombies? Because if there are, like, whoa, man.
That’s all I got.
Sounds like you may have enjoyed your weekend too much.
Nah, zombies have to be corporeal. Kind of goes against the ghost-creed to be a physical being. You’re safe.
Watch the gratuitous shower scene from SG:U episode 3 over and over until productivity returns. (Should only take about 10 minutes for a man your age…)
Well, sure! There are obviously just as many ghost zombies as there are zombies, or ghosts!
Of course not. Zombies are just “hungry ghosts” formed when the hun and po souls separate after death. The actual corpses never animate – the hungry ghost must return to its body before daybreak or be destroyed.
I dunno about your zombies, but according my my grandma, jumbies are all over the place. (And not quite “dead.”)
“Are there such things as ghost zombies?”
Heh, Someone has been reading Mike Carey…
According TO. :-(
No, there are no ghost zombies. If you could put a person’s ghost together with their zombie, you would have a living person again (for as long as you could keep them alive).
Actually that assumes you can halt or destroy the animating principle of the zombie. Otherwise you have a spirit helplessly watching from inside as their body walks around doing terrible things, sort of like a Goa’uld.
An animating principle is like a ghost, except that it’s transmissable by bite, usually material in some way, and has no autoeject for when the body is too damaged to meaningfully live—a nice feature designed into our ghosts, inconvenient as it is when you’ve just been shot through the heart and are reviewing all the things you’ve neglected up til that point. Honestly, folks, it’s a safety feature. See above under “spirit, watching from inside decaying body” only without the animation.
Shambling animated corpses with no souls haunting the corporeal world. and/or colorless apparitions posessing little substance trying to devour what is left of the rational world.
Sure, ghost zombies exist: they work for Fox News.
Well now that is interesting. It comes down to the nature of the zombie and the nature of the ghost. If both originate from a supernatural source, I’d find it unlikely for such a creature as a zombie-ghost or ghost-zombie could form. Now, I’m no PhD in necromancy, but that’s how it seems to me.
Now if we’re talking a (more or less) mundane source of zombification, say the zombie plague model, then we need to examine at what point the zombie aspect takes over. Does the person die and then become reanimated? If so, has the soul which would become the ghost leave? The interesting thought there is that we could have a zombie and his ghost walking around together, but that’s for a different day. If, on the other hand, the person transforms in a flesh-eating monster prior to death and retains a soul/life energy, then it is theoretically possible for the individual in question to retain enough consciousness to, if you will, imprint the zombified state onto that energy. Thus, once the zombie dies, the ghost which forms (let us assume that it has a reason for remaining on the mortal plane; get all the brains?) would be the zombie’s ghost, not the original human’s. Furthermore, depending on how much that imprint carries weight in the metaphysical state, that ghost could possibly be able to transmit the zombie state to other ghosts.
I would imagine that the circumstances of that particular creature would be extremely hard to create.
Ghost zombies? Why not? This could be your chance to break into horror!
Ooo, John, nice pun on pate/paté on Twitter an hour ago.
Perhaps they’re not so much ghost zombies as zombie ghosts. They’re mindless automatons in the spirit world who feast on the “brains” of other ghosts.
They might be caused by some manner of spiritual pollution, or by a supernatural force…
If zombie ghosts exist and still crave human “buhraaainsssss” it must be woefully unsatisfying. They can’t even starve to zombie death or be shit in the head as part of a mercy killing. Those poor poor bastards.
Maybe we should set up sort of a Jerrys Kids charity for them?
* shit in the head
little known technical variant of shot in the head. Generally resulting from misguided typing.
Zombie ghosts, leave this place!
Great, now I’m going to have that stuck in my head all day.
I am *so* with you on the no brain today thing. Slept like crap, two days running.
And if you are -not- referencing Full-Life Consequences, then I can only say: get thee to a youtube now-like!
Aww… awesomeness *would* come to Cleveland when I’m not there.
@ dave h. “sure ghost zombies exist: they work for fox news.”
*snort* *snickersnort*
Right state, wrong city. We’ll be heading out to Ohio Valley Filk Fest (OVFF) 25, over in Dublin, this Thursday.
Ain’t no such animal as ghost zombies; only one undeadification works on a person at a time. (Besides, you couldn’t kill them properly, with salt, if they were intangible. Not fair.)
The whole ghost zombie argument is academic, I’m afraid. From the Seventeenth Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica:
“Ghost zombies were discovered by Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen de Trémarec on the islands that bear one of his names in February 1772. They originated from the crews of various lost ships that found their way to the remote isles, and consequentially their discovery led to much progress in the sciences of ghostolution, zombiology and ghost zombie sexatation.”
“Sadly, the peaceful, vegetarian undead were ruthlessly exploited by passing ships. Properly intoned, a few passages read from any convenient sacred text would easily separate the ghost and zombie portions. The incorporeal half could then serve a convenient source of eldritch energies, while the now-inert corporeal portion was available for use as animal fodder, combustible material, or a source of souvenirs. The last known ghost zombie was used by the HMS Tenderizer‘s chaplain to both make a chest of drawers dance around and to fuel the ship’s boilers in 1849.”
Well, one day Rob Zombie will die. He’s pretty much got “future angry poltergeist” written all over him. You know, something along the lines of a focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm, or a Class Five full roaming vapor. Probably a real nasty one, too.
Anyone see zombieland yet? is it any good?
I just saw “Where the Wild Things Are” and man was it depressing.
I don’t think the previews really give you the emotional feel for what the movie will be like. Previews were pretty much all happy go lucky. The movie, man, the movie was… I don’t know how to even describe it… It felt like watching a dysfunctional family break down into a big ugly argument over Christmas dinner, and I’m one of the invited guests. I was thinking “Christmas dinner” and “pumpkin pie”, and I staggered away feeling a little numb.
Also, speaking of zombies, what was the name of that zombie video game that everyone was ranting about on Whatever a while ago and is it on teh PS3 yet?
Coulton. In Cleveland. Friday. Who cares about ghost zombies. Or zombie ghosts.
Greg @ 25 –
I saw Zombieland last week. It was definitely not depressing. It was a pretty fun ride. I’d pay to see it again.
A certain unnamed celebrity makes for the best cameo evar in a zombie movie.
Very funny.
Temper that with me on night shift with the baby for two months (brains=ooze) and the last entertainment piece I saw before that was Inglourious Basterds, which I thought was amazing.
Cool, I’ll see if my movie buddy can go see it with me.
I definitely recommend Zombieland as well. LOTS of laughs. and gore. Everyone in it was great.
It seems to me that John has already answered his own question.
You can’t brain today cause the ghost zombies have already phased through your head. Unlike real zombies they only fifth dimensionally eat your brain so the effects are only temporary. Kind of a transient aphasia effect.
There was a major ghost zombie tempest in “78 and “79 that made a major impact that only now can be appreciated for the horror that it caused.
It’s the only thing that explains polyester leisure suits, platform shoes and those gold chains that seemed to run rampant during that period.
If we’d have been able to think, we would have never worn any of that crap.
You ever look over the AMC stuff… Which entries were victorious?!
There appear to be vampire zombies, if that helps:
http://www.the-isb.com/images/MZ304a.jpg
Welcome (in advance) to Cleveland. The Beachland is a great, intimate venue to see a concert & is actually the former Croatian Workingman’s Bar, so it’s undoubtedly haunted by many of my wife’s relatives . The neighborhood is slowly changing into an arts district, but for health & safety, try to park under a streetlight.
This isn’t topical, but since yesterday your WordPress has been “upgraded” to recognize my phone’s Opera Mini browser and default to an awful, useless “mobile version” of the site. Not an improvement.
I thought I was the only one of my acquaintance traveling to scenic Cleveland this weekend (not for the concert, alas, but for a chess tournament at the no-doubt lovely airport Sheraton).
Paging Craig Ranapia.
If you could email me offline at:
email at greglondon dot com
I would like to discuss something offline with you.
#35 Jeanne:
The Airport Sheraton is a nice hotel & I have no reservations (ha…) about putting clients up there. It’s undergoing some rennovations, but they didn’t cause any disruptions, at least as of 2 weeks ago. They also serve a nice stiff drink at the bar, if that’s of interest.
There is such a thing as zombie goasts though. To quote the illuminated (troll) Squirrel King:
John Freeman said “Zombie goasts leave this place” and the zombie goasts said “but this is our house” and John Freeman felt sorry for them becaus they couldnt live there anymore because they were zombie goasts so he blew up the house and killed the zombie goasts so they were at piece.