TV with Margi V

Watching television the other day with Colette because we are mad for Christmas specials. Rudolph, Frosty, Mr. Heat Miser, Abominable, and all of the other horrific Yuletide creatures. We were watching some festive show or other when, during a commercial break, we saw an advertisement for a video game filled with murder and face punching. Maybe there was a little mayhem, too. I don't really remember. Then there was another commercial for yet another video game.

This one was called Zombie Summer Camp.

The basic premise, or so I gathered, was that you are a ten year old kid named Jimmy who is sent away to Camp Attawaugan for summer vacation, and sometime during your first night away from home zombies invade the camp and start eating all the kids, some of whom return from the dead and try to eat you.

Onscreen we watched as Little Jimmy rammed a skewer with a flaming marshmallow on the end through the chest of an attacking zombie, driving the rotter back into the campfire.

I was about to make comment condemning the game when I realized that Colette was making that snorty snuffling noise that meant she was laughing.

"You think this is funny?

On screen, Jimmy was fending off three zombie cub scouts with a canoe paddle.

"Yes," she said. "I...do."

In the last sequence, Jimmy whipped a live squirrel at a dead camp counselor. We both started laughing then.

"Popeye...loves...this game," she said.

"Get out."

"Seriously. His favorite...weapon...is the...tent...spikes."

"He kills zombies? In the game?"

"He says it...is...cathartic."

I giggled some more.

"That Popeye is a weird kid," I said.

Anyway, I thought those were strange commercials to run during children's holiday shows.

"I wonder...what's on...ABC Family?" Colette said.

I changed the channel.