Kieran has PDS. He's a Partially Deceased Syndrome Sufferer. He gets medicated with a drug that regenerates living brain tissue. However, what he really needs is a hug from the humans he used to think of as food.
Last night I watched the first of three episodes in the BBC America mini-series "In the Flesh." First a disclaimer: those of you who follow my blog know that I'm absolutely in love with zombie apocalypse stuff. After all, I talk about "The Walking Dead" all the time (at least when it's in season). So this review of the show may just be a little biased.
I LOVED "In the Flesh." The main character is Kieran, a Brit and he's a "Partially Deceased Syndrome Sufferer," and the BBC couldn't pick a more adorable protagonist (well maybe "R" from "Warm Bodies" would be a good substitute). I could feel his emotional pain, his longing to just be embraced by other humans, and it tore at my heart strings. "In the Flesh" took my emotions, grabbed them by the jugular, and body slammed them. I can't wait for part two tonight. Yes, I'm begging to be body-slammed yet again.
And I just want to say, that when his parents picked Kieran up at the PDS facility, they didn't hug him. I kept waiting for the hug to happen, and it never did. Why for crying out loud won't anyone hug him? He's just come back from the dead...he's got memories of eating people and is really broken up about it, and no one in Britain has the compassion to give him a hug? Embedded below is a three minute sneak peak of this series. I totally dare you to watch it. Oh and if you missed the first episode, don't worry. They're airing them again on Sunday. BBC America has been knocking it out of the park for years now. We've got the reboot of Sherlock Holmes, we have the new Dr. Who Series, we had Merlin, Torchwood, and now I have "In the Flesh." PLEASE BBC, you need to make "In the Flesh" a full blown series. IT IS AWESOME! Thank you for giving us the warm fuzzy zombies that we really wanted to just hug instead of shoot in the head. How absolutely brilliant of you.
So we are a little over a month away before AMC's epic "The Walking Dead" starts up again, hopefully with a high body count and much samurai sword wielding goin' down in the zombie apocalypse. We can blame the Nielsen sweeps for such lulls put upon us by the holidays, but the fact is, if you're like me, blame only goes so far. So what can we do in the meantime?
1) My first suggestion is to read The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor.
Seriously. This novel had me on the edge of my seat for two nights as I consumed page after page following the first days of the outbreak. The Governor (known as Philip) and his brother (plus a couple of friends and his daughter Penny) are just like everyone else: caught unawares when the world "mysteriously shifts" and the dead rise up to eat the living.
This book is dripping with gore. My favorite scene is when this small group commandeers a luxurious Cadillac Escalade and try to make their way into downtown Atlanta where there's supposedly, a government refugee camp where they can get supplies, help, medical attention, military protection, and perhaps an explanation as to what the hell is going on.
As a little background, in the early days of the outbreak, power is still available in many areas. There are still television broadcasts going on along with updated news programs. But as the hours march on, more television stations drop off the air, and broadcasters turn to previously recorded shows. The way the author writes it, it's eerie in a very normal way. So really, there's no reason for our group to know that Atlanta has been overrun. Just that it seems suspicious that the television stations are all so quiet.
Well this Cadillac Escalade is essentially a rolling tank. And Phillip gets caught downtown watching zombies come out of skyscrapers like clowns coming out of a clown car. There's literally thousands of them, and they get cut off on all sides. So he slams his Escalade into four wheel drive, revs it up to sixty miles an hour, and just cuts a swath through the walking dead, blowing them up, running them down, and creating so much "zombie grease" under the tires and carriage that it hydroplanes through a building and gets wrapped around a concrete pillar. And behind them, the zombies are roaring, relentless, and hungry.
2) You should watch all of the episodes of High School of the Dead on Hulu. You don't have to have a Hulu Plus membership. It's totally free. You just have to sign in using Facebook to show that you're old enough to be watching anime with such "adult/gory" content.
High School of the Dead is exactly how I would picture The Walking Dead in Japan. Only here we have young adults being eaten alive. The outbreak starts simple enough at a school with a zombie being mistaken by the principle as a trouble maker trying to break into the school's secure grounds. When confronted, the principle gets bit and quickly spreads the contagion. So the faculty ends up eating young adults. A particularly chilling part of the anime is when the voice of someone in the office is shouting "Stop! It hurts! It hurts! Stop!" and then screams when the mic goes dead. After that, there's a stampede as kids try to get out of the high school. A pair of girls (vowing to protect each other) gets separated, and the one stands over the other horrified, watching her friend get torn to pieces by zombies. It's great! And yes, for guys out there who like to see Japanese school girls in their school uniforms, there's lots of that going on.
3) Watch 13-year-old Nick Mastrangelo's animated video of The Walking Dead's Daryl Dixon in action. It involves machine guns, a magic crossbow, and even robots. You should watch this and then ask yourself what you were capable of doing with a computer in the 8th-grade.
4) Watch the new "Evil Dead" trailer which is being billed as the scariest movie of 2013. This trailer is Not Suitable for Work. It is for mature audiences and features gore, swearing, and a disturbing scene where a woman cuts her tongue in half. But for the "Evil Dead" purists out there, it should be quite satisfying. It looks less campy than the Bruce Campbell/Sam Raimi version, and the Necronomicon looks pretty convincing. In case you don't know, the Necronomicon is an H.P. Lovecraft prop used in most of his Cthulhu mythos stories. It's not something you'd ever want to read from. In the least it rouses the dead, and that's never a good thing.
Housekeeping:
Next week I shall be attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I decided that I am going to take a laptop so I will strive to blog about C.E.S. And yes, I am going to grab as much free stuff as I can possibly get. I'm going to point out to every vendor that I work for the State of Utah and we do demonstrations for people all of the time SO HOOK ME UP homey! :) Mostly I will be going to the Silvers Summit and taking a look at Smart Home Technologies and basically anything that "differently-abled" people could use to make their lives more independent. That's my career (using assistive technology to provide independence and a more meaningful life to those who could use some help). I install cameras and environmental controls that are voice-operated, I install voice-operated computers in people's homes, and strive to stay on the cutting edge of technology.
Anyway, I hope my laptop doesn't get stolen in the airport. I think I've taken every precaution.
If you have time today, please visit Laura Eno's blog as it's a stop on my book tour. You can find her HERE.
Additionally, on Saturday I will be at the Indie Book Blog. I think Oculus is getting a review. You'll find that blog HERE. Oh well, I guess that's the chance we authors take, right?
FREE MONEY>>>Also, the $50.00 Amazon Gift Card promotion is still going on. Go HERE for the daily tweet which has been updated. The gift card giveaway ends this Monday.
Have a great weekend. Monday, I shall be doing a cover reveal for Ellie Garratt's new book.
SPOILER ALERT -- This blog post discusses season 3, episode 4 entitled "The Killer Within" from "The Walking Dead."
In the image above is Andrew from Season 3 of The Walking Dead and from the comic book of the same name. Those of you who have followed my blog for some time know I periodically like to talk about story elements present within the shows that I watch. Aside from being another nail-biting episode, upon finishing, I had questions about the moral nature of man and the idea of screwing over your fellow man in a zombie apocalypse for no good reason.
Primarily...what I wanted to know is why?
Screwing over your fellow man has never really made sense to me in any science fiction drama that features terrible creatures that will eat you. Burke did it in the movie Aliens and when I watch the movie, I still wonder why. Was Burke insane? Did he not see what the alien xenomorph did to humans. It has got to be one of the most gruesome fates ever imagined.
A zombie apocalypse isn't much better.
With Andrew, he had to run for his life from Rick after his nefarious plot (along with inmate Tomas) was exposed and they tried to kill Rick. Rick chased him to a zombie infested yard where Rick slammed the door shut on Andrew. The last thing we heard were Andrew's chilling screams.
Well, we learned Sunday night that Andrew survived without getting bit and somehow made it to a safe place where the zombies couldn't get to him. Now, if that were me (and trust me...there'd be long odds that I could ever survive one day in a zombie apocalypse) I would count my lucky stars, use the skills that I have to obviously survive multiple zombies, and go into the wild and look for a place where I could find food and shelter away from people that want to kill me. Perhaps I could find another group of survivors that could take me in if I showed them that I could be a good person with valuable survival skills.
But this isn't what Andrew does. He gets back into the prison with the intent to screw over Rick and his crew. Doesn't he realize that each time he encounters the zombies that he is risking his life? Why would you ever do that given that the zombies could kill you and the people you are screwing over can kill you? I would be terrified of both. And he literally gets an entire herd of zombies all riled up by blasting the alarm at the prison. This can only end one way.
So why would a person do that? And does it seem just a little unbelievable? Like maybe they needed to establish that the character was a lunatic before going down this road? Or do you think it's perfectly reasonable that a man on his own (that should feel lucky just to be alive in such a cruel world) would turn from thoughts of survival and focus on those of revenge against people who failed to kill him?
I look forward to finding out what you think regarding revenge in settings where the stakes for your very survival are extremely high to begin with, much less inviting wrath from another front.
EDIT: Well all the YouTube videos got taken down because of a copyright complaint made by AMC. However, you can watch them on the AMC network's website located HERE.
Thanks, Andrew for the heads up.
Gotta love The Walking Dead Season 3 Webisodes. So what do you think?
This mysterious black woman on the above cover is Michonne (pronounced ME-SHAWN). Her weapon is a katana and she's an expert at using it. This is her grand entrance which doesn't show her wearing a hood. All badass people wear hoods. She shows up with two shackled zombies that she pulls along with a chain, one of whom is her former boyfriend and the other was his best friend. She cut off their arms and lower jaws to make them docile and unable to harm her.
Frank Darabont has confirmed that Michonne will be in the series but perhaps not until season 3. Stephen King has also been signed to write one episode.
I leave you with more shots of Michonne who is arguably going to be the most badass character in any television series presently showing on any network.
If you are a fan of The Walking Dead like I am, you will want to watch all six of these short WEBISODES that I have conveniently put on my blog for you (and in order) so that you can plant your butt in your chair, grab some popcorn, and scream "ZOMBIES!!!"
And for those of you who are NOT into zombies...there is much eating and gnawing of flesh. So this may not be your thing. You have been warned.
Here's a little background:
In The Walking Dead's Season 1 episode "Days Gone Bye," sheriff's deputy Rick Grimes encounters a badly decayed female walker lying beside a bicycle in a park. Later, he returns to mercifully shoot the walker in the head. Who was this woman? How did she become a walker? AMCtv.com presents The Walking Dead: Torn Apart, a six-episode web series that explores the back story of Hannah, better known as "Bicycle Girl." Watch all six episodes now, and learn about Hannah's life before the apocalypse, her struggle to survive and protect her family and her ultimate demise into zombie-hood. Webisode 1 -- "A New Day" Webisode 2 -- "Family Matters" Webisode 3 -- "Domestic Violence" Webisode 4 -- "Neighborly Advice" Webisode 5 -- "Step Mother" Webisode 6 -- "Everything Dies"
And here is a plug for fellow blogger, Charles M. Pulsipher's novel "Zombies At The Door".
You should buy it now on the kindle for .99 cents or wherever books are sold! Otherwise you may not survive THE WALKING DEAD. Click Here to go to Charles' Amazon page.
