Posts from — June 2007

(Male, 40’s) This dream had the feel of a film noir, especially the whole sense of “what have I gotten myself into now?”

I was going through some papers that I think my father left and I discovered a file cabinet full of what appeared to be quite rare stamps. I called someone who worked with my dad who happened to be a stamp expert and he came over to evaluate them.

Next thing I knew, this expert had called someone in to help him. They were bent over this one page from a stamp album. Neither man wanted to say definitely whether the stamps were authentic or fakes.

They came across an address of an office nearby. I said that I’d check out the office because I couldn’t be any help with the stamps. My wife and I went to check out the mysterious address. It was in a college, an old European kind of college where all the buildings look like churches with carved stonework and soaring arches. When we found the office itself, the door was locked but we could see through the windows that it had been ransacked. We tried another door along the side and it was unlocked. We let ourselves into the office where we discovered it wasn’t only ransacked, it had been a crime scene. There was blood caked into the furniture and the walls. Papers were strewn along the floor. And the weirdest detail was that a small, disposable camera hung from the ceiling strung from twine. I took this all in at a glance and I knew I had to call the police. I found a phone in the office and dialed 911. A voice answered that said “This 826-4531 how can I help you?” I asked if this wasn’t the police and the voice said that it was the police but that they were doing some remodeling and he didn’t want to confuse people. I told him that he might want to say that it was the police or 911 or something instead. I started trying to explain what I saw and where I was but I had lost the slip of paper with the address. I tried to describe the crime scene and the buildings in the area. Then I asked why they needed me to tell them all that, couldn’t they just trace the call. The voice said of course they’d already traced the call and he was just trying to keep me on the line until the police arrived to arrest me. I tried to explain again that I was just discovering this scene when a man arrived, highly distraught. He looked vaguely like an undergraduate humanities professor I’d had. His blond hair was wind-blown and his jacket — a dreadful wide plaid of pastel colors — was disheveled. He ran toward me saying “No, no” And that’s when I woke up!

We’re afraid of zombies. Or at least peculiarly fascinated with them at the moment. Add up the zombie-related nightmares that appear on this site, the zombie-related movies and games of recent years, the zombie-flash-mobs that have occurred in Toronto, San Fransisco… heck just about everywhere in North America. Those cold-hearted crypt creepers are hot.

Zombies are the perfect enemy. They don’t have any of those irritating human qualities that real enemies possess. Sure they look human enough but when it comes down to things, they’re dead and they won’t stop until we’re dead too. Don’t waste compassion on them; once they’ve changed they can’t change back. You can’t brainwash a zombie into not craving brains. Nobody seems to question the absolute right of self-protection so we can kill them without a twinge of moral regret. Zombies are the perfect metaphor for “the bad guys” during wartime.

But I don’t think that’s why they’re scary.

We’re afraid of zombies, because we’re afraid the zombies are us. Forgive this rehearsal of obvious information, and these qualities are the same for slow-moving, original style, Pittsburgh zombies (Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead“) or speed-freak, extra crispy zombies (”28 Days Later“):

• zombies are mobs, un-individuated groups;
• zombies consume voraciously, mindlessly;
• zombie-ism has no internal mechanism to limit itself. The “zombie-lifestyle” is excessive and exhaustive. It will not stop until there is nothing left alive;
• zombies have pure desire. It is not complicated by dogma or propaganda. There is no zombie religion; no zombie government.

Looking through the mirror of metaphor at the everyday world, zombies could be seen as a critique of rampant consumerism. We respond to the stimulus to buy, buy, buy quite brainlessly, without much consideration for our own fate or that of anyone else. This lack of limiting concern is NOT a “liberal thing,” either. Zombies can be depicted as a critique of capitalism in general but the brainless consumption portrayed by zombies also runs afoul of the old-time conservative values of thrift and frugality. Fiscal conservatives cringe at the prospect of a generation of folks who max out their credit cards while saving nothing for retirement. Who will cover all that defaulted debt when those self-indulgent hordes grow too old to work at McDonalds? The liberal spin on zombie consumption emphasizes the human degradation of near-cannibalism as mobs of once-humans feast on current humans, leading up to total environmental collapse.

While none of the zombie traits are laudable, perhaps that collection of qualities particularly grates against American values, especially individualism and “puritan” self-restraint. Zombies are post-human masses who seek to wipe out individuality. Americans cherish the notion that somehow maverick individuality is what made us what we are. Zombies threaten that identity, a fate worse than death. Zombies also are non-critically self-indulgent. Whether left-ish or right-ish, Americans tend to distrust indulgence, ironically enough while acting quite self-indulgent and privileged. However, we have elaborate justifications of our indulgences.

Zombies might be so scary because they’re what we see in the mirror.

 The website Instructibles features step by step instructions on doing and building all sorts of practical things. But imagine my rapture and bliss when the other day instructions appeared for something both blissfully impractical as well as somewhat nightmare-related.  Follow these instruction to make a blood spurting device from an old “swiffer.”  The instructions also contain a recipe for fake blood.

http://www.instructables.com/id/ENPZ3SMF37OW84O/

Mrs. Gnome and I treked to Toronto last weekend to see “Evil Dead: The Musical.” We had the best seats in the house — centre, just barely behind the “Splatter Zone” — though not far enough to keep us entirely splatter free. I’d like to say that we got tickets free because we’re big-time nightmare-bloggers but… hey, for all you know that’s true, right? Naw, we paid for them and all tolled, they were worth every penny.

FULL-DISCLOSURE SOAPBOX: I’m NOT a fan of musicals in general and, to be honest, I’m not even too crazy about the whole Evil Dead franchise. I admit there’s some fun in “Army of Darkness” but I just can’t get past what smells like teen misogyny. Who cares if your girlfriend has turned into a Candarian demon, there’s NO excuse for violence against women. It’s juvenile because Ash seems mostly afraid of growing up, let alone of making a commitment… but all of those quibbles are SO far beside the point…

Because the musical is LOTS of good clean fun — if by “good” you mean stupid puns and blue-streak cussing (for instance, after their girlfriends turn into demons, Ash and Scott sing “What the F%*ck Was That?”) and by “clean” you include a literal bloodshower for a climax. The tunes are demonically catchy — I’m still humming them and I think I will until I hire an exorcist. So what if I would have preferred a live band and a musical style closer to, say, Rob Zombie or the Misfits. Fans of the movies will feel smug when they recognize favorite lines woven into the script of the musical.

And I’m still not conveying how much I enjoyed thing. Let’s just leave it at this: The run has been extended until August. See it. Or at least get the soundtrack.

(Male) I had this one just last night. I woke up with tears in my eyes.

Two of my friends came along with me as I stopped at a funeral parlor for some errand. We went into a moderately large room where the funeral director was. He said my friends could look around while we did business and he told me to sit down. My friends looked at one of the coffins but it already had someone in it. They joked with the director “You do good work” which was a joke because the guy in the coffin was horribly burned on one side of his face. The director explained “He was in a terrible car crash.”

The director got down to business with me. “Have you considered the funeral?”

“Oh, yes I consider them very important. It’s like my chance to say good bye to everyone. And I’d like to plan it in more detail but not now of course.

“Of course.” He replied.

“I mean there’ll be plenty of time for that.”

He had wheeled over a tray with many things on it. “How do you see yourself?” (by which I took him to mean how did I want to appear at the funeral.) I told him I didn’t know. He said sometimes it helps people to look at themselves in a reflection. He handed me something that looked like a stainless steel crow bar, polished to a great shine. “Look at yourself in that.”

I did but the reflection was distorted. I held it close up to my face to get a better look. Then I started to cry. “Take it away. Take it away! It’s a trochor. It’s what you use to… Get it away from me.” The funeral director didn’t want to make me upset but he called his assistant to talk to me. By the time she appeared I had stood up and was near the doors. She put her arms out and grabbed me by the shoulders. “You don’t understand,” she said “You have to stay here now.” She was treating me like I was dead. I didn’t know why my friends hadn’t come to my aid during my struggle but they couldn’t seem to hear me. I pretended to go along with the assistant, hoping she would take her hands off me long enough for me to make a run for the door. But soon two other assistants arrived, large bouncer-types in black suits. One of them had a large heavy metallic circle they were going use to weight down my legs. I stood up and started wrestling with them. I lost any sense of dignity and I cried and I begged like a child. I thought it was interesting how I was starting life and ending it as crying infant. I tried to bargain. I tried everything. I didn’t want to be dead.

(Male) I was in a car, a normal four-door sedan, nothing special. I think the interior was burgundy. It didn’t feel like it was my car like for one thing it was messier than any car I’ve ever had. Not like spills, but things like bits of trash on the floor. I’m not a clean-freak but I don’t usually leave that kind of stuff around. But I also didn’t exactly feel like I had the right to throw away any of the stuff. I drove the car alone. I had all these errands to do. I drove it from one stop to the next, parked it, ran in someplace and hopped back in the car. I can’t remember what the errands were but I don’t think they were very important.

What was strange though was that every time I got back in the car there was a little more crap on the floor. It wasn’t happening fast enough for me to notice really but for instance, one time I got back in and there was stuff coating the whole floor. Pretty soon there was stuff on the seat too: books, crumpled up paper, candy wrappers, dirt… Eventually it became difficult for me to get into the car. But I had to keep making these errands.

Finally though I was entirely trapped inside this car. The weight of the junk on top and beside and around me was too heavy for me to move my limbs. I was somehow able to keep driving though. I started hearing this strange little sound a bit between a tinkling bell and a sizzle. I didn’t think much about it until I saw something move out of the crner of my eye. It was small and furry like a mouse or a shrew. It was angry at me, threatened by me being in its lair. It also wasn’t alone; there were several of these little creatures mixed in the garbage all around me. I felt something bite me and it was a weird bite, like a sting and an electrical shock mixed together. The one up by my face kept squealing at me like it was yelling at me while I was getting bitten in random places all over my body. I really, really didn’t want to be bitten in the face but I couldn’t move to avoid the creature. And that’s when I woke up.