DailyNightmareIt’s probably best not to say too much about “One Day” (2012), a short film by Korean director Duc Nguyen, except that if you like what we like here at the DailyNightmare, you’ll love this very visual, very moving tale. I’ll be on the look out for more by the director and his ShadowPlay Films.
(Male, 40’s) I’m writing this down for you in the middle of the night because I will be DAMNED if I’m going back to sleep. I woke up very rattled and I was afraid even to get out of bed at first.
It was a really classy, arty dream, like everything was significant. I was waiting in line for a favorite restaurant in some city that felt both familiar and comfortable. When I finally was able to get a seat, the prices had all been raised due to an art show that was next door. I decided to boycott the meal so I went to the basement.
My old therapist was there and she had a bag full of pamphlets that belonged to her dad. Evidently he was a harshly fundamentalist preacher, based on the contents of the bag. I felt curious about her personal history but I also felt guilty, naughty, dirty. I felt great compassion oddly for her father whom she seemed to hate.
I strayed into another part of the building which was the art installation in question. Instead of one big room, the pieces were shown in these small, claustrophobia-inducing rooms all linked to each other. The art works were immense papier-macheé sculptures. They were familiar objects all bizarre and wrong. One was an apple that was at least five feet in diameter. It was painted a gory hue of red, more the color of entrails than fruit. On top, there were hateful words scrawled in black letters a foot tall. Vicious graphitti.
And there were zombies that jumped out from around corners. Or some kind of undead. Maybe they were performers… in fact, I seemed to recognize them in the dream, as being members of a death metal band. In the dream, the name of the band was “Zombie Ferox” — which I think is the name of a horror movies, right? The zombie performer was all in black and white, strips of bandages for clothing, frizzy hair, thick gray lips and sunken black eyes. I think it was female. I told her that I enjoyed her music. She — it?– smiled but continued “performning” this bizarre dance that was half attack, half modern art. She kept physically assaulting me then pulling away. It was easy to keep pushing her away but there was something deeply sinister about how she was toying with me.
Then another “zombie” arrived. This one was clearly female, lithe, slender with flowing blondish hair and pale ashy complexion. Again she was both undead and a performer, very clearly a dancer… which made the other zombie feel more like an actor, maybe a martial artist. The second zombie wore a thin grey dress that went down mid thigh. It was wispy like funeral veil and which was the same pale grey as her skin tone. The effect was as if the dress was sheer, that the dancer zombie was naked but not in an entirely sexy way. She would have been rather hot… if she wasn’t weird and undead. This second zombie got a small pitcher of milk from the fridge and also a small vial of vinegar and she made curdled milk. She used it like perfume. She smelled like rancid milk. Like the first zombie, her actions were very physical and very threatening to me but I was able to keep pushing away her advances.
We were then, all three of us, in the house where I grew up. It was night, I don’t know how late. I grabbed the second zombie around the chest and dragged her outside. I can remember how she felt, her flesh so soft and tender. I said something like, “Let’s see how scary you are outside.” I had the sense that I was trying to rupture the frame, that these undead things were only acting — which is not to say they wouldn’t have killed me, they were quite physical in their attacks — and that I could radically change their behavior if I changed the frame of reference.
Outside on the street, there was a small group of young men, wearing black t-shirts with a crudely painted symbol on the chest and back. It glowed lightly in white paint. They were up to no good. The zombie ceased harrassing me and started to drift away down the street. She attracted the attention of the gang who started to follow her. I had no doubt whatsoever that she would be able to rip them apart effortlessly if they attacked her. But they kept coming, these youth. The first in the group were late teens but by the end of the crowd — maybe three dozen in total — they were much younger, maybe 3rd or 4th grade.
They were up to no good, as I said. If it matters, they were all white suburban kids, their boredom made them monsters. I knew they would murder me just to have something to do. I felt a cold, brutal fear, unlike the weird supernatural fear I’d had of the undead performers. These gang members could only kill my body; the zombies wanted my soul… or something even deeper and more comprehensive. There were too many of these punks to fight, though I felt reasonably sure I could hold my own against these younger thugs. I laid down in the flower bed, kept my face down, didn’t move. The thugs milled about, very close to me. If I hadn’t been in a flowerbed, I bet they would have tripped over me.
Then the first zombie seems to have started to lure them into the house. One by one they climbed in through the window until they were all gone, every last one of them.
I was on the roof at this point and the roof was covered in beer barrels, the stainless steel kind. The window led right up to an automated dishwashing machine. I started feeding these barrels onto a conveyor belt into this dishwasher, stuffing them in one after another. I eventually cleaned up the whole roof, thinking to myself “I don’t know which one will kill me first, the Nazis or the Undead but dammit, at least I’ll clean up this mess before I go.” which seems an oddly industrious sentiment for a nightmare.
I awoke as I pushed the last barrel through the window.
Hordes of undead shambled through downtown Ann Arbor last weekend and they did it for charity…and presumably for brains. The 2012 Zombie Walk Ann Arbor was held last Saturday, Sept 27. The undead were requested to bring canned goods to benefit Foodgatherers, a charity that feeds the hungry in Washtenaw County. I do not know if Foodgatherers has an official policy on feeding hungry zombies, however. I caught up with the zombies as they dragged their partially rotted corpses through picturesque Nickels Arcade.
The macabre parade was kept in line by “armed” representatives from the local chapter of Zombie Squad, a national organization that seeks civilian preparedness for zombie outbreaks and other types of disasters. The decomposing crowd ended it festering stroll at the Michigan Theatre, just in time for Three Corpse Circus, the annual festival of short horror films, where the undead were given a discounted admission.
Those purveyors of premium schlock, Troma, have released a whole slew of their full length movies on YouTube. Great fun. They might not be exactly fitting with our “snob” reputation here at the DailyNightmare, but Troma has a full four decade legacy of producing authentically independant films… or at least movies. Love ’em or hate ’em, that’s an impressive track record. And they’ve released films that they distribute too like “White Zombie” with Bela Lugosi, considered the first zombie movie.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Tromamovies?feature=watch
It’s official: this game still rocks. When I first dl’ed it a few weeks ago, I half expected “Zombies, Run” to be a clever idea that didn’t quite deliver more than a one hit spin on exercise motivation. And that was going to be fine with me. I already knew I needed to get more exercise and if “Zombies, Run” just gave me the initial kick to get started, it would have done enough.
It’s done more. The little app has maintained my interest and actually spurred me to exercise longer and more frequently than I’d originally planned. I planned to be doing a “mission” that is 30:00 or so three times a week. Last week for instance, I exerecised six times. I’m also exercising for longer than my original plan. Today, I’m recovering from 46:00 minutes.
In particular the app helps in two key areas. The first problem area for me is that first 5 minutes. The drudgery is in full effect while none of the endorphins have kicked in. Pre-Zombies, this was a time when I frequently would stop. Now there is a thread of narrative interest that keeps me htting the pedals. (OK, so I “cheat” — I’m using an indoor stationary bike instead of actual running.) The other problem area occurs at the end of the workout. There’s an option in the app to select workouts of about 30 minutes or about an hour. 30 minutes are getting a bit too easy for me and though there’s a clear sense of closure when the “mission” in complete, the app switches seamlessly into “radio mode” where I can continue running while listening to DJs from my beloved zombie-ridden town. And most important, I can continue to gather supplies for this beleaguered encampment. That supply-gathering aspect is the game part of the app. Every tin of food or discarded mobile phone that I retrieve helps contribute to my town’s vitality.
And there continues to be some nice serendipitous corelations between the songs in my playlist and the zombie menace. A few that come to mind are:
• “Those are People who Died” by Jim Carroll
• “Be My Frankenstein” by Otis Taylor (the refrain is “Just wanna live another day”)
• “Can’t Get You Out of my Head” by Kylie Minogue (a guilty pleasure — don’t judge me! — but given the zombie context I imagine the undead trying to crack into ones skull to feast on the goo inside.)
• “Crawling from the Wreckage” by Dave Edmunds (especially for the beginning where “Runner 5” emerges from a crashed helicopter)
• “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” by Johnny Cash (the zombie tie-in is that it was used in the remake of “Dawn of the Dead” as the opening credit sequence, as I recall.)
• “It’s the End of the World as We Know it” by R.E.M.
• “Nemesis” by Shreikback
• “Run to the Hills” by Iron Maiden
• “Survivalism” by Nine Inch Nails
etc.
If I keep this up, I’ll be ready for 5K season in no time. And I’ll have honed a survival skill for the zombie apocalypse.
(Male, 20’s) I came home one night, around twilight. The actual house resembled the house that belonged to my grandmother, by the way. But there was something wrong, really wrong. The entire first floor of the building had been ripped apart, pretty much torn down to studs. There were people I didn’t know living there. They were frantic and quite suspicious of me at least at first. It was difficult to explain to them that I actually lived there, that this was my house.
Evidentally they lived there too, somewhere upstairs. I asked what happened. Zombies attacked and started tearing off the siding and drywall. It was like the zombies were cracking the shell of a peanut in order to eat what was inside. But then, evidently the zombies wandered off when dawn came.
The inhabitants of the building were insane with fear because they thought the zombies would return because it was nearing dark. They were useless. I tried to get them to work, to re-arrange some of the rubble into a small defendable structure but they were shell shock, totally gone.
I picked up a piece of metal and stapled it to a joist. There, I thought, at least I’ve started.
Though I have no enduring love for the undead, I basically adore the iOS App “Zombies, Run” a fitness game that fuel-injects a bit of narrative into the brain-eating monotony that aerobic exercise so easily becomes. The premise is simple: you are the sole survivor of a helicopter crash after the zombipocalypse and your objective is to run — literally, run — around picking up supplies that are needed at your home base. Game play is a series of audio tracks that are interspersed among the tracks of your standard workout mix but once back at the base, you can assign the assets you’ve picked up.
TIP: Make a workout mix rich in creepy, high energy tracks. The first time I was warned of an imminent zombie attack and counseled to sprint, serendipitously the track “Be My Frankenstein” by Otis Taylor came on. It’s refrain is “Just wann live another day” and the icy guitar work was a perfect motivator to avoid the imaginary menace. My existing workout mix is fine but a good playlist would really augment this game. I’m going to have to listen to those good ol’ Rue Morgue Radio broadcasts to come up with more tunes for future “missions.”
The app struck me as a bit pricey, $7.99 but then again, I’m a cheapskate. However, I bought it without a second thought because I have the body of a middle-aged geek and I needed something to ressurect my fitness regimine after a long winter nap. “Zombies, Run” is very likely going to do that. I wasn’t ready to strap on running shoes today — my excuse was the spring rain plus my fear that I’d injure myself early in process and have to sit out while I healed — so I played the game while on my stationary bike. Some features weren’t accessible like the ones that are based on the accelerometer — presumably when the radio operator exhorts a boost of speed to escape an unexpected pocket of undead, the iPhone actually senses that effort. Cool beans, eh? Even without the machine keeping watch, I still cranked it during those close scrapes. I was just going to kick the tires with an easy spin but I found myself completing the whole first mission, a good half hour of workout. I’m dripping in sweat… and ready to play another round.
My suspicion is that if you are reading The Daily Nightmare, you need this app.
You’ve heard this advice before but it bears repeating: double check before sending someone to the morgue. This goes for family members, “private undertakers” and heck, probably especially for the folks who work at the morgue.
Sometimes folks are just unconscious, not fully deceased.
http://www.capetimes.co.za/man-wakes-up-in-morgue-1.1104810
(Male, 50’s) Extremely strange and disturbing dream that only incidentally had a zombie in it. I guess that’s enough to make it a nightmare, right?
I was in this house which at times was the house where I live now and at times was the house where I grew up, even though it really didn’t resemble either of those actual houses very much. There was a big apple tree in the back yard.
And there was Richard Pryor. He was just hanging out. He might have been a relative or he might have been just a friend but he was just there and we were all acting like it was no big thing. I haven’t thought of Richard Pryor for years by the way though I used to think he was pretty funny. He looked good, like he did back in the 70’s before all the freebasing coke stories came out. So there was me, Richard Pryor, the girl who later became my wife and a couple other people.
We were working on plans to remodel the house. We all were inside standing around the dining room table and then one of us would make a change to the set of plans, then we’d all walk out side to see what that would look like on the house. It was like as soon as we made a decision, it actually changed the house.
But we got mixed up a little. Some of us were changing the plans while others were checking the results, so I passed people coming back in as I was going out. And one time when I passed Richard Pryor, he wasn’t looking very good. His hair had changed to white and his skin was ashy grey. He was dead alright but he was still walking around. No one else seemed to realize it yet, and Richard Pryor didn’t even realize that he was a zombie yet so I still had some time before things got ugly.
But the only weapon I had was a hammer. I got it in my hand and I came up behind Richard Pryor. I knew that the only way to kill a zombie was to take its head completely off – at least that’s what I “knew” in my dream. So I was preparing to hammer at the back of his spine, over and over until his head fell off. It was going to be awful. I felt sick to my stomach thinking about all the gore and blood. When I raised the hammer behind my head, I woke up.
(Female, 40’s) I’ve been watching *Lost* on dvd so maybe that’s what brought on this dream about a group of zombie apocalypse survivors.
My partner and I were on a camping trip in a mountainous area. We had put up our tent and were making dinner when a group of armed people came into our camp. They started asking us questions like who we were and what we were doing there. When we answered them, they seemed relieved. They explained that now they knew that we were okay. Because we could talk, we weren’t zombies. Somehow my partner and I had missed the news reports that there was a zombie outbreak in this place. We weren’t safe in the woods, they said, so those people led us out of the mountains and back into town.
The town had a large university campus, and most of the survivors had moved to this area, we were told. Everything looked normal, but we were not to let that fool us. Danger was everywhere and especially after dark. Zombies were fast and clever but unable to talk.
My partner and I stayed at the university. We made a few friends and got to know the area. We went out to the bars with friends in the evening. I didn’t understand how life could appear to be going along normally if there was this zombie problem. Everything looked like it was working normally: the university had classes, the electricity was on, college students were playing frisbee and getting suntans.
My view of that relative ‘safety’ changed abruptly. My partner and I were walking home from the bar with four friends and a zombie appeared. We all ran as fast as we could. Someone fell down, and someone ran back to help him, hitting the zombie with a shovel. Then we all ran into a house and collapsed in the chairs and on the floor, gasping and trying to catch our breath. We looked at the friend who fell. “Are you alright?” someone asked him. He just nodded, out of breath. We should have been worried at that point, but we weren’t paying attention.
My partner and I went into the kitchen for a drink of water and so did two of the others, leaving the falling down guy and another guy alone in the living room. When we came back into the room, we realized our mistake. Both of them were silent, staring at us, hungry-looking.
We had been told that zombies couldn’t talk, but no one had told me they could communicate. As we watched, one guy’s head turned into a gray wavering smokey head sitting on his shoulders, and the other guy opened his mouth wide and inhaled this entire head, nodding like he understood. He exhaled the smoke, and the head materialized like normal. Then the second guy’s head turned into the same kind of gray wavering smoke, and the first breathed him in. This was how the zombies communicated. If we hadn’t been so utterly fascinated, we would have hauled our asses out of there, but we survivors just stood there watching.
When the zombies turned toward us and started to advance, we scrambled out of the house, pulling the door shut and holding it. “Hurry! Get the fire department!” the guys holding the door shut told me. The fire department would come and set the house on fire. That was a change, right? But it was the only way to deal with zombies.
(Male, 30’s) This wasn’t a nightmare like it was scary, just really really depressing.
It was long after the zombie apocalypse. Maybe 20 years. Humans had survived but so had zombies. We just couldn’t come up with a way to totally wipe them out. So I was walking down the street and I had to be careful to avoid the half dozen zombies that were just shuffling around. They weren’t really a threat. They felt like homeless people – a little smelly, shabbily dressed… well, homeless people with rotting faces, I guess.
But what was really depressing is that there was a general sense among the surviving humans that it was just a matter of time until we’d die out too. I know this is my rational wide-awake mind trying to make sense of things but maybe there weren’t enough people left of the right age to re-populate the planet. At least, we all were wandering around, bored and hungry, not really that much different than the zombies.
I’m not that a true-fan of zombies as a mega-genre but this credit sequence has enough crack-snapple-and-bop to get me interested in seeing the actual adaptation of the long-running comic “Walking Dead.”
And of course, here’s the actual trailer:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid83327935001?bctid=59356961100
“…A particularly rich signifier here, right?…”
Subtle political commentary, it’s not.
He claimed that he found this “little zombie” inside of a living zombie
Zombies eat our brains, right? So it’s only fair that we should get to nibble on them as well.
Can we call the whole zombie craze, ah, “dead” so to speak, now that eight year old kids are asking that their birthday cakes be made in the shape of an undead corpse?
“…they hurried after me and got in too before the doors closed…”
If you sleep with the light on because you’re worried about the imminent zombie uprising, then I’m no so sure this product is what you’re looking for.
I don’t mean make a zombie FOR yourself. I mean make yourself into a zombie.
Len Peralta makes these nice cartoon renderings of your face as if you were a brain-gobbling undead. (http://flipface.me/zombie/)