Dealing with prejudice against zombies in a life biased world.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Dealing with prejudice against zombies in a life biased world.

One of the last acceptable prejudices is prejudice against the living impaired. Comedians that would not dare to crack a racial joke do not hesitate to mock the undead for a cheap laugh. No one is willing to stand up for those who have shuffled off life’s mortal coil yet continue to shuffle about.

All undead face unfair legal obstacles and oppression. Once declared dead, a person is subject to the loss of all of their property and voting rights. While these injustices affect all the undead, be they vampire, ghoul, or ghost, I’d like to take the time to specifically address the challenges that face zombies.

Zombies have been reduced to stereotypes in the minds of the living. They are characterized as being mindless, smelly, brain eaters. Such untruths are unfair and hurtful. Many zombies are quite quick, both in ability and mental nimbleness, and do not limit their diet merely to brains but also are devourers of human flesh. While zombies do tend to be smelly, their condition is not their choice. The odor of rotting flesh is not an easy thing to cover up and mocking a zombie for their smell is like mocking a still corpse for its lack of life. Zombies cannot help their dietary requirements. Those zombies that are cursed with a slow shuffling gait deeply wish they could speed along with their faster brethren. Those zombies who are limited to merely moaning the word “brains” in a low groan would love to be able to establish a discourse concerning the merits of the two party system in the US, but it is difficult to speak when one’s lips have rotted away, and zombies have been disenfranchised and thus have no voice in the process.

Yes, zombies track dirt in from the graveyard, but who put the zombies in the graveyard anyway? It is us! It is we the living that have buried zombies in the very dirt that we then complain about when they smear it upon our floors.

We the living need to reach out to zombies if we are to understand them. We need to bring them into our homes and understand the horrible challenges that they face. I think that if you take some time to get to know a zombie, you’ll learn a lot, not only about the undead, but about yourself.

I have here with me Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith was my neighbor until last week when he lost his life and was converted into a zombie. I’d like Mr. Smith to say a few words to all of you.

Now, don’t be nervous Mr. Smith. Just step up on the stage here… That’s it. Ok, now tell the people what you think of the unjust zombie oppression that you face.

“Braaaaaaaiiiiiiiinnnnnnsssss………”

Yes, that’s right, speak your mind.

“Braiiiiiiiinnnnnnnssssssssssss!”
Um, Mr. Smith, would you mind giving me a little space….

“Brains!!!”

Oh dear god! Get it off me! Get it off me! Someone shoot this damn thing! AHHAHGGGGGGGHHHHHHH…………….”

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If you’ve not seen it, the documentary Shaun of the Dead covers the issue of Dead Rights in the closing act. They undead are proven to be useful members of society, working jobs and providing emotional comfort, entertainment and stability to the living. Indeed, the prejudice against our undead brothers and sisters in the current state of the world is heartbreaking.

EZ

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See, this is why I urge everyone to boycott Halloween. It’s just not fair to the real witches, vampires, demons, and undead monsters of varying types of this world to depict them in such a degrading, insulting and silly way.

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This sort of spoofing of the real issues of the undead is aboslutely appalling. do you poeple not care a lick for the families of the zombified?

Think of the poor widow who has had to bury her husband three times now.

Or the mother having to discipline her child for eating the next-door neighbor.

You people have no shame.

5

I think it would be a great service to the Zombie-American community if such celebrities as Bob Dole, Joan Rivers, Cher and Abe Vigoda “outed” themselves.

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You won’t get away with pushing your Undead Agenda on me! I know those zombies just want to corrupt our youth and revel in their hedonistic undead ways, right in the faces of upstanding living citizens!

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My own neighborhood is full of zombies and I don’t have a problem with them at all. Oh sure, all the moaning and random body parts falling off unnoticed can be somewhat annoying, but I try to overlook that. We all have problems in life.

In fact, just this morning my zombie mailman delivered my mail and accidentally left two of his fingers dangling from the mailbox. I just scooped up the fingers and ran after him down the street. He stopped and I gave them back to him. He was very grateful, he even told me thank you. Well, at least I think he said “thank you”. It sounded more like “Aaaugugghgghghaoooowowghgh” but it’s the thought that counts, right?

8

Throughout my life I have grappled with my own identity, who I am.

As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact confused. By virtue of my traditions and my community, I worked hard to ensure that I was accepted as part of the traditional family of America.

I had the blessing of marrying Lynne, whose love and joy for life has been an incredible source of strength for me. And together we have a most beautiful lesbian daughter.

Yet from my early days in school until the present day, I acknowledged some lack of feelings, a certain sense that I wanted to eat brains. But because of my resolve, and also thinking that I was doing the right thing, I forced what I thought was an acceptable reality onto myself, a reality which is layered with all the “things of typical living-person behavior.”

In this, the 63rd year of my unlife, it is arguably too late to have this discussion. But it is here, and it is now. At a point in every person’s life, or unlife, one has to look deeply into the total lack of one’s soul and decide one’s unique truth in the world, not as we may want to see it or hope to see it, but as it is.

And so my truth is that I am a Zombie-American. And I am blessed to be undead in the greatest nation, with a tradition of civil liberties, the greatest tradition of civil liberties in the world, and a country which provides so much to its people, living and dead. And undead.

I am also here today because, shamefully, I ate the brains of the President, which violates my duties as Vice President. It was wrong. It was foolish. It was inexcusable. I realize the fact of this brain-eating and my own undeadness, if kept secret, leaves me, and most importantly the President’s office, vulnerable to rumors, false allegations and threats of disclosure.

So I am removing these threats by telling you directly about my Zombification.

Let me be clear: I accept total and full responsibility for my actions.

It makes little difference that as Vice President I am dead. In fact, having the ability to truthfully set forth my identity might have enabled me to be more forthright in fulfilling and discharging my constitutional obligations.

Given the circumstances surrounding the eating of President Bush’s brain and its likely impact his ability to govern, I have decided the right course of action is to resign.

I am very proud of the things we have accomplished during my administration and I want to thank humbly the citizens of the United States for the privilege to govern.

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Heh. Hands feeling better, Eve?

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You must still be hungry. :smiley:

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Yes. After all, it was only a wafer-thin after-dinner brain.

12

I just want to thank Blackclaw, and Eve, and the other dopers for their brave stories. You’ve all given me the courage to acknowledge something that I’ve only recently begun to understand myself:

I, Solomon Grundy, am a zombie.

I guess I’ve always known I was “different,” ever since I woke up in the swamps outside Gotham City. I tried for so long to deny it, to repress it, to “pass for living,” but I always felt that there was a part of me missing. As it turns out, it was a significant portion of my large intestine, but I think it was so much more.

I tried to hang out with my living friends in the Legion of Doom, laughing along and agreeing with them when they told stories about “breathing” and “being in complete control of their faculties,” even though I couldn’t really relate. And still, occasionally I’d see a particularly slow-moving human walk by, and I was overcome with urges I could just no longer deny.

The repression built up, and I began acting out. I figured I’d get all the brain-eating out of my system and go back to being living. I’d find myself heading out into desolate wooded clearings or swamps, shambling into cabins, bursting through boarded doors, and having completely unsatisfying attacks on the living. And invariably, I’d shamble home dejectedly and sit on my couch, wracked with guilt over what I’d done. I’d watch movies like The Serpent and The Rainbow or Dawn of the Dead and become even more miserable, because I couldn’t identify with any of the zombies in those films. Something had just made me die “wrong.”

Then I moved to Raccoon City, and my unlife changed completely. People are just so much more accepting of it here. I didn’t choose to live on after death. Yes, I’m a zombie, but it’s such a small part of who I am. And it’s given me such a wider perspective on things – I used to have my own prejudices against vampires, and liches, and werewolves, and immortals, but now I see that we’re all in this together, just trying to make some sense of our unlives.

Sure, there are still the Supermen and Batmen and Jill Valentines of the world, who will always hate me just for being undead. I still have people say that I can’t be a zombie, because I’m “too well-dressed and articulate.” I have people tell me, “You don’t act undead!”

I’ve had people say, “I don’t hate zombies individually, I just don’t see why they have to act like zombies! It should be a personal thing between them and the people they choose to eat.” Or, “I don’t see why they have to make such a big deal about being a zombie, always screaming and whining for special treatment.” I don’t want special treatment. I just want to be able to live out my tortured existence as neither living nor dead for eternity as I see fit, just like everyone else. And to crush the Superfriends. And some pants, too.

I’ve had people tell me I’m unfit to be a brain surgeon, because of course I’m going to be in the middle of an operation and just have to start eating out my patient’s head.

I’ve seen the faces of people who point, and scream, and go running off slowly in the other direction, occasionally throwing their shoes at me. It’s prejudice, and it hurts, but I’ll go on.

I’m here. I’m undead. Deal with it.

13

I am aghast that you all seem to have forgotten to mention Reg Shoe, a pioneer of zombie rights.