We won't be meeting on Tuesday, March 19th because I have come down with a nasty case of the zombies.
I'll see you all on Thursday. Provided I can find something (hand-holding, romance, the love of Rob Corddry?) to reverse the zombification and bring me back to health and living.
Yours in braaaaiinnnnnghghshjhsfkjhsdkjfhkjsdf
The Department of Energy reports that they have created "zombie cells" that can outperform their living counterparts. I am not making this up.
“Once we’ve used silica to stabilize the cellular structure, it can still carry out reactions and, more importantly, that reaction is stable enough to work at high temperatures. The method is also a means to take a soft, potentially valuable biological material and convert it to a fossil that will stay on our shelves indefinitely.”
Over at AmericaBlog, John Aravosis is... disquieted by this news:
So what they’re saying is, it’s going to be harder to kill the zombies with fire. And without outside intervention, the zombies can live forever.
And in maybe less disturbing news, Wesley Snipes, recently released from prison, is now releasing a ZOMBIE WESTERN he filmed way back in 2006: GalloWWalkers:
Seriously, I think we're all doomed.
This image was the front of a mailing I received yesterday from the Sierra Club. It caught my eye, as it was obviously intended to do, with the "zombie" reference. What continues to interest me is the SC's doubled-meaning with "zombie." Most obviously, the pipeline was dead (in the political sense) and is now again "alive" or undead. But, as we've discussed before, the zombie is a particularly pliable metaphor. Here, it's really just being used to invoke disgust or disquiet.
What do you think?
This is awesome. Hackers broke into two Montana television station broadcasts to spread the news. The truth!
KRTV says on its website the hackers broadcast that "dead bodies are rising from their graves" in several Montana counties. The alert claimed the bodies were "attacking the living" and warned people not to "approach or apprehend these bodies as they are extremely dangerous."
Here's video of the hacked emergency report:
You knew it was coming. But did you correctly identify Montana as ground zero?
While travelling in Wales, recently, I came across this advertisement painted on a railroad trestle in Cardiff:
At first, I thought that the Torchwood team had failed, and Cardiff had been overrun by zombies. Then, I learned that Brains is the national beer of Wales, and a local Cardiff favorite.
Also, Popular Science uses the excuse of Warm Bodies to ask: "Do Zombies Experience Consciousness"? So, there's that, too.
For Tuesday's class, as threatened, here is Heather Albano and Richard Jackson's game Choice of Zombies (playable online or on Android or iOS.
As with the CYOAs, play through this one at least two or three times to get a sense for the different paths and endings. Also, pay attention to the stats system and how that changes the experience from the print books.
Happy zombie apocalypse surviving!
When I get all of the FERPA forms and when the communities are finalized, I'll put this, and the list of who's in which community up as a page at the top of the blog.
For now, here's the schedule of when you'll be blogging:
BLOGGING SCHEDULE
Post #1:
Post #2:
Post #3:
At midterm, you'll have the opportunity to change role and community, so we'll plug community names into these slots when we get there.
Welcome to the course blog for ENGS 168: Z is for Zombies, an English seminar taught by Dr. Richard Parent at the University of Vermont in the spring 2013 semester.
On this blog you'll find the course description, reading schedule, projects, and the ongoing course discussion created by myself and by you and your classmates.
