Wow! Look at the Wall!

Since I've been away, we've had our three thousandth member join the Wall! OMZ! Trads, zombies, and I think one werewolf!

In other news, by using a very complex mathematical formula, I have determined that incidents of bullying the undead are down 17.63% percent at Oakvale High (if you would like a copy of my highly scientificalogical study you can post a request here). Differently biotic kids are becoming much more active--no wait that doesn't sound right--they are becoming much more animated--no wait that's not right, either--they are becoming much more involved in school activities. There are a few zombies in the upcoming school play, The Crucible, there is a zombie on the wrestling team, and my pal Melissa (also a zombie) has joined the yearbook committee. Zombies everywhere! And still more coming to the school all the time.

Colette is back at school, did I mention? We already had an adventure! With Phoebe!

Are zombies attending your school? How is that going? What sorts of activities are they doing there?

Membership Drive: Success!

Wow! In just a little over a week, you helped us get over the 2000-strong mark! We're hovering at 2001 at the moment--thank you!

And there's always room for more...

Membership Drive

Hey everyone, Phoebe here. I'm writing to ask you if you have any friends, zombie or otherwise (werewolves, pixies, and creatures from the black lagoon are welcome, also), who you think might be sympathetic towards the issue of rights for the undead, that you would consider encouraging them to add their names to The Wall at right. We're hoping to get as many people as possible to sign up in anticipation of Tommy and team arriving in Washington.

We're hoping to get the total number of names on The Wall to two thousand in the next two weeks. Can you help us?

Here's a silly "joke" from Adam:

Who won't get any older this year?

Answer: Zombie kids, and Phoebe. (I was born on February 29th--no birthday for me this year!) Conan O'Brien, he isn't.

He'd better not think he's getting out of giving me a present...

1000

One thousand people, zombie and otherwise, have now joined the wall. I can't wait to meet some of you out on the road.

Phoebe promises me that she will write an installment of "Words from a Beating Heart" for the blog by the end of the week.

Stay tuned...

Z.A.A. + The Growing Horde

800 people on the Wall! How did that happen?

A few more people will be sent wristbands if they email me at TommyWilliams17 at aol.com:

CrazedKittyCat for suggesting Pekin, Illinois.

YourDeadFriendBee for suggesting Los Angeles, California.

Axel, for suggesting Marietta, Georgia.

On my swing into Georgia I might visit Montgomery county. I read a story recently about Montgomery County High School that disturbed me--the high school holds two proms, which are referred two by many students as "the white-folks prom" and "the black folks prom". I have to admit that I was amazed that there would be racially segregated events in any high school today;if America cannot clear these existing hurdles, I can't imagine that we'll ever see the day were zombies are fully included with living society.

You can read the article HERE.

I've got three more stops to select for Zombies Across America--keep those suggestions coming!

Housekeeping

We've had a number of new people put themselves on the Wall--the horde is 750 strong!--so I thought I'd do a little updating for the newbies and newlydeads.

I'm Tommy Williams, this is my blog. I try to write about things that are happening in the zombie community. You can click onto the wall in the link at the right and join the virtual Wall, which is open to traditionally biotic and differently biotic people alike.

Every so often either Phoebe or Karen will write a guest blog. Come to think of it, neither has written here for awhile so I'll bug them.

I'm going to be taking a trip across America soon, and am looking for place to visit--if you think that your town would be a good place to check out, either because it is hospitable or hostile to zombies, let me know. Post to the blog and let me know where, and whether you think the town is pro or con zombie. Pro con zombie is not a delicious dip that tastes great with tortilla chips; that would be chili con carne.

Thanks to Lily Benan for suggesting a visit to Charleston, S.C. She, like the other nine people whose towns are chosen, will be sent a wristband from the Skip Slydell collection. So far I'll be going to Charleston, New Orleans and Memphis.

Stay whole,

T.

Membership Drive--Successful

Thanks to those of you who encouraged friends to join the Wall, which now has over seven hundred members.

You know what I don't miss at all? Allergies. Poor Margi has been sneezing up a storm.

A Little Help Here

Um, could one of you get one of your friends to join the Wall? Right now we have a number that Reverend Mathers would have an apocalyptic field day with.

What do you suppose the events would be if there really was an apocalyptic field day? 100 Yard Flaming Dash? High Jump into the Pit? Nine-legged race? Javelin catch?

Sorry. Please get someone to join.

Strength in Numbers

Six hundred and fifty people on the wall...

I received a post to this blog from "anonymous" that suggested that I was basically undermining zombie/trad relations with how I presented information in my blog. Here's a quote:

"By hinting that every mention of zombies in the national media is another example of an anti-zombie conspiracy, and by constantly referring to so-called 'white van abductions'--no proof of which exists--you are actually doing more than just about anyone else to ensure that the living and the dead will not be able to coexist without fear and suspicion."

I get the sense that this post was from a basically well-meaning living person, but one who is truly ignorant as to the amount of very real ("alleged" white van incidents notwithstanding) violence done to nonliving persons daily. I don't have to look any further than my own town for concrete examples of such violence. Even so, I think there is a valuable point here--the line between "raising awareness" and "creating paranoia" may be a thin one.

What do you think?

A Message to the Horde

We are now six hundred strong--and so now it is time to strike! Arise! Arise, my undead brothers and sisters! Arise and FEAST on the FLESH of the LIVING! AH HA HA HA HAR ARGH NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM...

Just kidding. Honestly, after dying even having a hamburger sounds kind of gross, never mind "the flesh of the living". Yuck. I don't even know why I wrote that, I'm in a very strange mood lately. You know when you feel as though everything has changed, and yet, nothing has? Me, neither. I don't know what I'm talking about right now. I apologize in advance to all the trad folk on the Wall and here as visitors. I didn't mean to scare you or freak you out. Just having a little April Fool's fun.

But, on a serious note--six hundred! And it isn't just The Wall that is growing--we've had more permanent guests here at the Haunted House in the past week than we had in the first few months after we moved to Oakvale. The "official reports" say that there are less than two-thousand of us, but I think those numbers might be considerably off.

Like I wrote the other day...I'm feeling that it is time for a change. Many changes, even.

Horde-O-Rama

In less than two weeks another fifty people, living and dead, have added themselves to the Wall.

The Horde Grows

We now have five hundred people on the Wall.

I'm amazed and humbled. When I first started this blog, I did so really for my own sanity. If it weren't for a few people close to me in Oakvale when I started, I don't know that I would have continued. I had no idea there were that many of us; no idea that people would come once I started writing and posting.

The idea that my words have may have helped give zombies hope, and maybe helped them survive, as well as helping traditionally biotic people understand us a little more and have a little more compassion, truly astonishes me. I'm so grateful for all of you.

Thank you all so much.

But I feel like there's so much more to do, and so many of us out there, lost and without friends...

Horde-ing Friends

450 people up on the wall, some living, some zombies. Thank you for your support.

I'll post the third and final interview transcript from Dead in the Family in a couple days. I promise you a more positive experience than the previous excerpts.

Dead in the Family

Another fifty people have joined the Wall in the past week...we've got enough for a zombie walk!

Did anyone catch the program Dead in the Family that ran on one of the news networks the other night? It was a profile of three families with who have dealt with the death and return of a child. Two of the families did not take their zombie child back while the third did. The program was fairly well done, and I think there was a lot to be learned from one the people profiled had to say, no matter which side of the issue you come down on.

I'm going to transcribe excerpts from the interviews over the next few days.

Dead in the Family, Excerpt One

The first excerpt was conducted with the "Joneses", "Steve" and "Erin" (not their real name), from Verona, Wisconsin. The Joneses look to be in their early forties, moderately well off (He has an IT job in Madison, she has a local state job). Their sixteen year old son "Rick" was killed in a car crash and returned as a zombie the next day. The interview is conducted in their house, which looks to be a comfortable upper middle class suburban home. They have another boy, "Steven Jr.", age 13. The camera occasionally pans to show him tossing a ball with a large golden retriever in the back yard. The woman conducting the interview is never shown and the camera remains fixed on the couple except for these few shots of the boy and his dog.

How did your son die?

Steve: Rick was killed in a car accident, along with two other boys, his best friends. They were on their way to a party. (pauses). Alcohol was involved.

Was Rick driving?

Steve: No, one of the other boys was. Josh. All three were drinking, though. (Pauses)He and Rick were co-captains of the school's wrestling team.

(His wife, Erin has begun to cry)

When did Rick come back?

Steve:(With irritation) That's the wrong term. I hate it when people use that term.

I'm sorry. What word do you mean?

Steve: "Come back." Rick didn't "come back". Rick left the moment he and his friends hit the parked car.

I'm not sure I understand.

Steve: Look, there's no such thing as "coming back". When someone dies, they die. Whatever those...those...zombies are, it isn't someone's deceased child returning from the dead. It is something else entirely. I think you people have to stop planting this false hope in people's minds.

Something else? What?

Steve: (Folds arms. Erin is drying her eyes with tissues) I've got no idea. All I know is that it isn't our children. And when you say "coming back", it makes us out to be the monsters, like we abandoned our children or something. But that thing was not our son.

Erin: We knew as soon as we saw him.

Could you tell us about the first time you saw him after the car crash?

Steve: It was the day after the crash. The call we'd been dreading came from the hospital the day after the crash, and the woman that called us said the same thing you said; "Your son has come back". Like we were supposed to be happy about it, or something. They told us to come down to get him. So we...

Excuse me. We?

Steve: Yes. Erin and I.

You didn't bring your other son. Steven Jr.?

Steve: No. Why would we?

Erin: He...the body had been damaged in the accident.

Steve: We didn't want our son to have nightmares for the rest of his life. Which he'll probably have, anyway. When we got to the hospital they brought us to this room in the basement. The zombie was there. They'd put a hospital gown on it.

Erin: His arm was broken. And his face...

Steve: They'd cleaned the body up some, but not entirely. (Pauses) I think it is disgraceful, what these people put us through. Bad enough that we have to live through the trauma of our son's death--now they want us to have to see that...that mockery of him? And they barely even clean it up first? It isn't right. It isn't right at all. (Pauses). They're lucky we don't sue them. I'm thinking that we should.

What went through your mind when you saw the zombie?

Steve: That it wasn't my son. That it wasn't my son at all.

I'll post the second part of the excerpt with "The Jones" in a few days.

Sticks and Stones

A comment Annette (and why aren't you on the Wall with the 352 other zombies and friends of zombies, Annette? Join us...join us...) made the other day on the yeti blog reminded me of a blog topic I wanted to write about.

Why is it whenever there is a stofy about zombies on a television show, that the newscaster always wants to make some smarmy joke at the end of the story? I realize that they have to put a bow-tie on their stories (how else would we have closure?) but do they have to be so coindescending and insulting?

Here are a few I've written down in the past few weeks You can imagine the air quotes over the appropriate words:

After a story about a zombie-fronted punk band: "Well, Jane, I guess I'm surprised they are such fans of live music."

After a story a group of teens who cast a zombie in their youtube video serial: "That won't be making the jump to the Lifetime network.

After a story a group of teens who who created Zombie Zine, a magazine about zombie culture: "Would you call that a lifestyle magazine, Marianne?"

Look, I like a good joke or pun as much as the next dead guy. If Karen or Phoebe or someone said one of these, I'd probably laugh. I just can't stand these fake plastic people, most of whom probably couldn't stand to be in the same room as a zombie.

And then there's this comment, the absolute worst, that ran on a local news station after a story about two zombies hunted down and reterminated in Pennsylvania(their murderers have yet to be identified): "That's life!"

As a great man once said, common sense isn't so common.

Helping the Horde Get Animated!

There are now more than three hundred people on the Wall, zombie and trad alike. I had no idea that we would get so much support in such a short time.

I've been thinking about how I want to make Get Animated! more impactful this year; I think it will involve more than playing school sports and going to school dances. I want to initiate real change.

Can you tell I've been emailing Skip? That's why sort-of words like "impactful" start showing up in my vocabulary.

The Zombie Horde Grows

Wow-we've got over 200 people on the wall! I feel so happy that there are so many people out here supporting the differently biotic I almost feel...alive. Thank you all so much.

Plus, I've always secretly harbored a desire to be part of a horde.

All in All

Sweet--we now have over a hundred people--zombies/beating hearts/trads/differently biotic and maybe even some vampires (they aren't real, are they?).

Congrats to Erin!Mal for being #100. You will be given a hall pass when the inevitable zombie invasion occurs.

I'm just kidding.

About the hall pass.

I mean the zombie invasion.

Seriously.

Anyhow, if each of you were to recruit one more person, we'd have 200 people "on the wall". Two hundred and two, actually, thanks to our one hundred and first member, TheRealDeal04_Vamp.

The Wall

Pretty impressive--since inviting people to send pics to the Wall of the Dead, we've had 41 people, zombies and trads alike, join. And what a good looking group we have.

You know what makes me happy? The fact that Rae, my bus driver, seems to not care that she has zombies on her bus. I wish that all of my teachers were the same way--they don't do anything really overt, but you can tell the ones who wish we'd just lie down already.

Sorry, folks. Not going to happen.

Virtual Wall of the Dead

We have a wall in the Haunted House where we've put up pictures of all the zombies we know in person or through the Internet. With some of the new Blogger features, we can do the same thing here on mysocalledundeath. Click the link under "The Wall" if you'd like to post your picture. Zombies and beating hearts alike are welcome.

Also, if you want to subscribe to the posts and/or the comments, click the links beneath the one for the wall.