We Hate Zombies

Scenario:
Ho ho ho, it’s time for Christmas.¹ You’re in the business of getting presents, and business is good if that’s the kind of business your family is good at. Or your friends, or whomever. Problem is that while you’re inside untying ribbon and shredding Christmas propaganda like ‘happy holidays’ wrapping paper, there’s a growing threat outside, getting ever closer to your door. And closer, but slowly, yet still closer, and it’s really cold outside so the going is pretty slow, but soon enough you and your family are in imminent danger. Next thing you know, Aunt Flufficans is looking kind of weird and the present you’re opening has some blood and a shitty wrapping job. Of course, inside you find a twitching zombie hand. Merry fucking Christmas. What do you do?

What you should do:
Fortunately for you and everyone else, you’re with the people you should be able to trust. Also, you can finally put all that “family” bullshit aside and take control, making those who best (and least) understand you do what you know is right to resolve the situation. This is your moment to shine, unlike that time you graduated from high school and everyone came to eat your cake, leaving behind only that symbolic alarm clock that squawks “HEY FUCKER! WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD BITCH! I’MMA EAT YOU ALIVE!!” (which is of course why you want to destroy it always).

Now the first thing you should know to do is to throw that zombie hand in the oven and switch it into ‘Clean’ mode. This makes the oven rock out until it’s over 500 degrees, burning up all kinds of shit that’s inside, including infected zombie hands. This won’t burn away the bone, but the bone isn’t really the part you should be worrying about. In fact, if you can get Aunt Flufficans in there, all the better. If not, it’s best just to tie her up with some packaging tape and throw her in the basement where you can deal with her later without the sentimental puppy dog eyes of her relatives.

It’s important to understand that families are both the strongest and weakest groups of fighters, strong because they can work effectively together and have strong bonds that can overcome such things as disputes and blood vendettas (usually), but weak because the fall of one can crush the entire family into immobility. That is, if little brother Jimmy turns into a zombie, do your parents have the heart to vaporize his skull? Probably not, but you’d better because you should know better. Once a zombie, always a zombie, and certainly not a Jimmy. Just because you know a croak doesn’t mean you don’t kill a croak. Do for the family what the family itself is too weak to do.

After the immediate threats of the hand and the Aunt are dealt with, you need to understand why the old hag was zombified in the first place. Did someone leave a window open? Is there another zombie in the house? Did she just arrive and was it already too late by then? Sweep the house, gather munitions, and determine where the best defensible positions are in the house. Then turn on the news, if it’s still going, or look outside and check the status of the world. If the shit is too bad, you might need to turn that house into a fortress. If you can still move about the world with some relative safety, decide who has the best house for the job and get going. Hope you got something good for Christmas.

What I would do:
Hm. This is pretty much perfect for me, but to help you understand why, here’s a copy of this years’ Christmas list:

1. Chinese Assault Rifle
2. Explosive Arrows and Bow
3. W.A.S.P. Knife
4. More shotgun shells
5. Night-vision binoculars
6. Gun cleaning kit
7. Case of M.R.E.s
8. … (list continues)

Sure, I didn’t get everything I asked for, but with a list like that it’s hard to go wrong, and what better way to test out all the new gear than a sudden zombie invasion. Not only does ithelp us skip eating that crappy fruit cake, avoid the relations we’d rather not see, and all the other unpleasant parts of seeing family during the holidays, but it also helps release stress and tension by exploding zombos while at the same time creating a bonding experience for the whole family. Woops. I misfired my exploding arrow and hit Uncle Fucker in the leg while he was running from the zombies. Good thing it was explosive so I could get the whole crowd… Thanks mom!

The lesson here is that we can’t avoid our family or the holidays, but we can make the best of them if we’re smart about it.

Oh, and WTF is this?

¹ Well, sometimes we get around to things a little late here.

Scenario:
Christmas shopping is something some people make an art of.  Other people could care less about art and wait to buy the crap they give to others the day before it’s due.  In fact, that’s most people, and because of this the malls are full of shoppers running like they’re three hours late for school and they missed the bus.  Some people are crying, some people had to settle for canned brussel sprouts, and some people just look sad and confused.  Ah, now that’s Christmas spirit right there.

Well, you thought you had all your bases covered, that is until someone reminded you of a distant relative who never shows up for Christmas but is going to show up this year.  Now you have to scramble to buy whatever’s left on the shelves and you find yourself surrounded by mobs of poo laden people in the mall.  Of course zombies would hit then, in the mall.  So cliche, but still.  What do you do?

What you should do:
If you haven’t yet, I would recommend you go out right now and rent both ‘Dawn of the Dead’ movies and watch them in their entirety whilst taking notes and shooting jello shots.  This is my normal routine for any given night, which is why this question seems kind of absurd to me.  I could resolve this scenario in a drunken stupor, but I digress.

If you’ve missed the movies so far, you’re sadly equipped to handle this situation, but there’s still hope.  As always you can find the nearest sporting goods store and convince some people to help you make a stand against the waves of the undead.  This is probably a good idea, but you have to get people’s trust and obedience quickly at a time when people are already freaking out about the holidays and will be even more freaking out when they see the dead latching on to someone’s neck.

People would freak the shit out.  Some would still be trying to keep track of their packages, figuring they had to fight for them against the living, they’re sure as hell not going to give them up without a fight against the dead.  Admirable, perhaps, but foolish, unless those gifts happen to be of the kind that shoot hot metal.

If you don’t know where the sporting goods are, your next best bet is to run orthogonal to the flow of people.  The people will most likely be running from zombies but also will be piling up in a massive heap at the exits.  These massive heaps are a bad place to be since zombies love to jump on the pile.  Also, if zombies are inside, chances are good zombies are outside, so people will be trying to get in as much as out.  That is bad news, so go sideways in the direction people are not going, then find a store with a maintenance exit, loading dock, etc.  Every store has some back way out.

What I would do:
I never ask myself why I get drunk and wander into malls, but it happens sometimes.  I get thrown out sometimes too, but there’s a high turn over rate of security guards so it doesn’t really matter.  Nonetheless, I could resolve this scenario in a drunken stuper.

So the zombies are wandering around the mall in that kind of slow gait they have.  I’m not particularly threatened by them, so I hijack one of those golf carts security people usually drive me out in and take off.  I stay near the middle of the lanes so people can jump out of the way to either side, but also so that zombies can’t jump out from behind something and immediately be a threat.  With my little buggy of doom, I’d head off to the sporting equipment place.  I know where it is, just like I know where Victoria’s Secret is, and there I load up on weapons of the usual sort.  Also, I get a high power spotlight.

Then it’s just like my annual deer hunting trips.  Shine a light in their eyes, then shoot, then repeat.  It’s pretty straightforward really.  After a while I’d probably get bored or overrun, at which point I would make my escape, probably through a vent in the ceiling but maybe out a back door if I still felt I could walk into a store without something jumping on me from behind a corner.

Also, I wasn’t at the mall to get gifts.  I bought them online just to avoid any kind of zombie threat.  Zombies don’t ruin Christmas, people acting dumb ruins Christmas.

Scenario:

The happiest day of your life has come; the wedding ceremony.  You’re at the alter, standing next to an old guy who weirds you out like the time you saw Janet Jackson on the street and then found out it was a dude, and you’re waiting for your beautiful bride to say her “I do’s” and that whole ring thing and then finally the steamy kissing scene in front of the children and parents.  Except when you throw back the veil to look into her beautiful baby blues, all you see are a pair of dead whites and a cold face, with blue lips drooling around one white set of teeth desperately trying to eat your face off.  What do you do?

What you should do:

Snap to your senses, soldier!  You don’t go flying out into the world half-cocked with a ball and chain holding you back like a knife in the thigh.  If your ‘bride-to-be’ was dumb enough to get caught up in a zombie orgy of death and black endlessness, than you’ve shown your colors as one who doesn’t know how to pick em.  This goes as a notice to those of you who don’t have wives yet: if your girlfriend doesn’t tell you the finer points of zombie hunting by the third date, you need to have ‘The Talk,’ and if she doesn’t nod and laugh with a twinkle in her eye as she starts to collaborate with you, then she can go straight to hell and you can move on with your life.

Now, of course its too late and you have an undead nag on your hands, and she’s really struggling to get in your business.  But not in the good way.  So instead of flipping your lid and calling for momma’s help to throw down that damn succubus, you instead turn to the Good Book (every creepy old man has one) and give her a howdy-doody upside the head.  Of course this is just for show since that will neither kill a zombie nor guarantee to knock them down.  (Don’t fool yourself into believing zombies have anything to fear from religion; that’s dumb)  What this act will do, however, is get the old man tangled up in the mix, and soon enough she’ll forget all about you and take a mouth full out of his cheek, giving you time to walk down to the audience, grab a folding chair, and brutalize some reanimated sons of bitches.

What I would do:

Never forget what resources you have at your disposal.  That’s the lesson of the advice I just gave you.  The lesson for what I’m about to say is not to forget the friends you have at your assistance.  This, of course, assuming you pick your friends better than your wife and they don’t fuck around behind your back, leaving you to sober up alone at a bar in the middle of the night.

Instead of turning to a cold, metal chair to do my business, I’d turn to my Best Man (that’s the guy who stands behind you at the wedding).  You see, if there’s anyone in the world who could pull of the two-man steel-toe triple lateral, it would be my best man.  The manuever was inspired by a time when I saw someone’s head get cut clean cut off after two figure-skaters tried to go pro before they were ready.  In this maneuver, I eject the knives hidden in the toes of my dress shoes (which are actually just shiny shoes on top of combat boots) and get launched spinning through the air by the Best Man.  This rotational speed and momentum will decapitate everyone on the left side of the alter, including the Bride.  Game over.  Bitch.

Yeah, that blurred super-hero, that was me.  I just saved the fucking day.

Title: Letum (click to play)
Style: Mindless Shooter
Source: www.nutstation.com

I’ve seen some zombie games in my time, and this, sir, is a zombie game. Bit of a weird one though. Far as I can tell, you play a redneck hillbilly in the midst of his swampy kingdom, fighting off zombies with a gun or two and about a million magical bullets that come from no where. No need to reload, no need to worry about strategy a whole lot. Nice, simple, zombie killin fun.

The weird part is that you jump around like a god damned jack rabbit, and you can jump off zombies heads and shoot them from above the clouds. Kind of weird, but you get bonus points for killing two or more zombies before hitting the ground, so I guess that’s a cool thing. Sort of. When you die, there’s an animated cut scene of a zombie knocking your head off. That part kind of sucks. I didn’t die because I lost, just to see what it was like. That’s kind of the biggest motivation for me to do anything. Wait, what?

The perks in this game are as few as the drawbacks, but I did enjoy the non-stop action and jumping around. It was a bit of a twist on the generic shooter game, and I thought that was ok. There are power-ups you can get occasionally to add life and such, and hitting zombies in the head tends to throw chunks on the ground. I like that. Makes me feel like I accomplish something even when I haven’t killed the zombie. Makes me feel like I could play a little longer. Kind of like gambling.

All in all in all, not too bad of a game. Addictive, a little, but not too much. Not too fancy, but not too dumb either. Good stuff.

Game Score:

Graphics:		3.0
Sound:		?
Fun Factor:		3.5
Satisfaction:		3.0
Total:

Scenario:
Ah, Christmas! What better time of year. Holiday spirit, shopping, Christmas lights. There’s a Christmas light display near your home, some sort of fund-raiser for freezing old people who can’t pay their heating bill. Normally you wouldn’t, but the Christmas spirit gets inside you and you soon find yourself driving 5 miles an hour down a road with so many multi-colored lights you’d think you just got punched in the side of the head. Then you start to see the shadows, and right after you rearend the guy in front of you, you realize what’s going on. Zombies. What do you do?

What you should do:
There are things I’d suggest, like turning back the way you’d come, that I might normally suggest. Usually I might say something about how the zombies having probably consumed the occupants of the cars in front of you, and now there are nothing but blocked roads and zombies everywhere up front. Usually I would suggest something like climbing the nearest tree, running over the tops of stopped cars back to the entrance, rigging up a huge kite and letting the wind pull you to safety. But not this time, because it’s fucking Christmas and zombies don’t get to chow down on mother fucking Christmas!

So find the nearest weapon you have. Assuming you’re prepared for the normal everyday kinds of emergencies, you should have a spare tire and a tire iron. Take your pick, but a tire iron will be easier to handle for most. Then go to town like Baberuth in a baseball factory and destroy those reanimated summ’bitches. Man, it’s gonna get nasty, it’s going to be juicy, and it’s going to take all night long. What better way to celebrate! Just remember to close your eyes when you crumple their skull, just in case you get pink mist in your face.

It’s going to be a very holly jolly Christmas this year.

What I would do:
You remember that movie Demolition Man? That guy would be me if I broke an arm and decided to puss out on Sundays. Fuck that shit, I’d screw a hole in the wall until the building collapsed just to kill a zombie. And don’t waste time talking about the rest of the people in the place who didn’t have a chance to get out in time: they were probably infected zombie lovers anyway.

So what if Christmas spirit makes me feel like donating to old people who might be zombies any minute. I’m not paying them, I’m supporting the American economy by helping it consume unnecessary energy while at the same time paying someone’s hourly wage. That makes me feel pretty good, kind of like pulling a zombie’s head off with two strands of Christmas lights. The trick? A sawing action and the wild-eyed determination of a junkie breaking out of rehab. God damn zombies anyway.

If you hadn’t guessed by now, I’d dive out of my car and start hanging zombies up in the webs of light haphazardly thrown on the trees like a giant vomitting out the seasonal section at Wal-Mart. Once all the croaks were dangling in the wind, or tied up on the ground, there’d be nothing left to do but crack open a cold one and start crushing some heads with my spare tire. How high can you make it bounce?