TV or not TV?

In this year’s Edinburgh Festival’s Fringe Comedy Joke Contest, this joke came fourth. “You know you are working class in modern Britain if your TV set is bigger than your bookcase.” Well, I smiled lightly and then it struck me that this was not a just a joke but actual reality. Not long ago I … Continue reading TV or not TV?

The Zombie Survival Guide

by Max Brooks Published by Duckworth 2009 ISBN 978 0 7156 5318 2

Are you alive and kicking? Not so sure? Perhaps you feel your own level of vitality, vim, and vigour are at a low ebb. If so The Zombie Survival Guide may be for you. It is a self-help book with a difference. It purports to protect the reader from entities called zombies. These fantasy creatures have became popular in modern horror fiction since the success of the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. They are portrayed as lifeless, sterile and apathetic, supposedly roaming around with a shambling awkward limp, and experiencing little or no physical sensation or emotion. The popular myth is that they are either re-animated human corpses or human beings controlled by someone else by magic. In either case they are said to be devoid of life of their own, and so assumed to be wanting to suck the life-blood from those who get into their clutches. If they get hold of you the book suggests this would be a living death and it aims to give practical advice about how to avoid this peril.

Yes, it all sounds rather macabre but I do wonder if this is a potent symbol for our times.