Even Dead, They Want to Be Reality TV Stars

I had another zombie dream again.  It is a fact of my life that, whenever I see promos for a zombie movie on television or hear anyone talk about it or get asked to go see the movie, I will have zombie dreams.  There is no escaping this fact of my life.  Just no escaping it.

However, as I find the idea of zombies to be an interminably funny one and not at all creepy, the dreams do not disturb me.  I usually wake up and giggle at the complete silliness of the dream.  It’s not a hard retreat, when you’re close to surrounded by zombies in a dream.  You just skip, walk briskly, or run away to a space that’s zombie-free.  Then you procure something with which to take care of their zombified brain.  My dreams usually end with any zombies around me truly dead, deader than Britney Spears’ music career.  And that, my friends, is wholly, utterly and completely dead.

We hope.

Anyway, I had another dream last night.  The zombies of my dreams (hee) are always the slow, lumbering zombies – none of this running zombie crap from last year’s remake of "Dawn of the Dead."  Even the idea of running zombies is a boring one to me, because they’ve never made it into my dreams.  Last night’s zombies, though, were different.  They were lumbering and slow, but other than their slower movements, you couldn’t tell they were zombies at all!  They talked, they displayed some intelligence, they were pleasant right up until the moment they tried to bite you.  In my dream, I wandered into a waiting area and sat down between two women, who proceeded to make conversation with me.  I replied pleasantly, telling them I’d just come back from seeing my friend L (from high school) who was working at a coffee shop (note: she’s a teacher) and had the opening shift, so she was exhausted.  All three of us chatted politely for a while when the short, dumpy woman with the pixie haircut said, "Hold still, you don’t mind if I bite you?"  And then she lunged for me stupidly.

I moved out of the way, getting up from my seat.  "What the hell are you doing?"

"Oh, just getting a bite to eat."  At this point, the other woman got up and started moving towards me.  Other people in the room, who’d been chatting with one another, also started in towards the WordNerd Delight in front of them.  I remember thinking, awwww, shit, but looking out the window, I saw policemen.  Who I knew were definitely not zombies.  I also saw helicopters and people with TV cameras.  "Hey," I said, "how about we do this outside so you guys can get on CNN?"

All the zombies stopped approaching me, squealing out that that was a good idea.  They left the room before me – once they did, I locked the door and smiled at them through the window, waving.  The policemen, who apparently knew how to recognize these melting pot zombies on sight, proceeded to kill the zombies.  The news cameras got it all on tape.  I was immensely proud of my clever, quick thinking.  I think I then sat down to read a magazine.

One aspect of zombie lore is that they recognize, vaguely, aspects of their former lives.  I guess these particular zombies were the stereotypical famewhores who’ll do anything to hold up a "Hi, Mom!" sign in front of a television camera.

Ah, the awesome power of television and the proverbial 15 minutes of fame.