The Adventures of JStar88 on The Blue Marble

Would you rather be dead or undead? Discuss.

Maybe trying to meet people in Stockholm has made me more comfortable with the living dead, or maybe Zombies are just in fashion this year, but this whole mysteriously-reanimated living thing trend has recently become just a little cliche...

Sure, Shaun of the Dead was quirky-funny (though a pale comparison to the timeless classic Dead Alive), and 2002 was legendary for both 28 Days Later and Resident Evil (hey, it's my blog. I liked it. AND I'm a Milla Jovovich fan.), but I was SO disappointed with the remake of Dawn of the Dead last year that I practically gave up on the genre.

Though the liturgy has occassional pleasant surprises like Die you Zombie Bastards!!! and supportive fans devoted enough to create great sites like Zombie Pinups, the only really great and fresh Zombie content I've seen in a long time is Robert DenBleyker excellent series of Joe Zombie flash movies.

Filmmakers keep retelling the same old stories about people dying and reanimating, then coming out to kill other people who then reanimate, etc. And the concentric circles expand frenetically, accelerating, threatening to get out of control... until we're all saved at the last minute by some enterprising... yeah. you know the tale as well as I.

If you want scary, think about what's going to happen when the armies of Zombie PCs are finally unleashed. Holy Internet brownout, Batman!

My friends Mitch and Samantha both recently appeared in Zombie movies (Land of the Dead and Graveyard Alive respectively), and they said their experiences were fun and exciting. I'll reserve my own opinion until I see them.

What genuinely captured my interest today, however, was an announcement from the scientific community that sounded like it might have been a product placement for the new George Romero movie (yes, the same one Mitch is in).

According to the almost-unbelievable news, researchers are now creating ZOMBIE HOUNDS in laboratories. Yes, really.

This is a clip from today's GMSV (Good Morning Silicon Valley) newsletter:

In a series of nightmarish experiments straight out of a horror flick, scientists at a leading university have killed dozens of dogs — then brought them back to life. The hapless pooches, who have their blood drained for up to three hours, are being reanimated in a bid to develop the use of suspended animation to help humans who are injured in combat or crime.

Developed by scientists at the university's Safar Center for Resuscitation Research, this reanimation technique requires the animals to be put down and their veins emptied of blood. Scientists then refill them with a chilled saline solution that preserves their tissues and organs. For three hours, the animals are left in this state, clinically dead, but well-preserved. Then their blood is returned to their veins and the scientists resurrect them with a dose of pure oxygen and shock to the heart.

Its creators insist it is humane and say it could revolutionize the way the medical world handles trauma patients. "This is an attempt to buy a little time for people who would otherwise just die," Dr. Patrick Kochanek, director of research center, told the New York Post. "We are suggesting that the alternative to this is death."

So is Dr. Kochanek suggesting that the alternative to permanent death is temporary death? I've always thought of death as a binary absolute (pending Zombiesque reanimation), and now it appears that there is a grey area.

When this particular kind of medical science finally reaches the point where it can be applied to "trauma patients ... who would otherwise just die," will the reanimated patients be classified as zombies? Will hospital cafeterias start serving fresh brains? Or will they be dried-out brains (made for astronaut zombies) where they just add water?

I've successfully avoided sweetbreads and pan-fried calves' brains for my adult life, but I wonder: do brains taste best cold or hot? Or maybe they are best served with some fava beans and a nice ciante? Does anyone actually know?

Perhaps, at the crux of it all, is the question to ask yourself when pondering the end of life as you know it: Would you rather be dead or undead? And why?

posted by jstar88 @ 10:43 PM