What the hell is it with zombies these days? When did it become fashionable to be an oozing, moldering pile of dead flesh? I’m sick of these things. They are everywhere, doing all sorts of obnoxious things like cutting me off in traffic, cutting in on the dance floor, trying to bite my ass off, and all sorts of other crap. I swear, they’re even worse than all those young men wearing large beards and my grandfather’s hat.

Just the other day I was minding my own business trying to break into a car when some shambling pile of rotting flesh comes along and tries to nibble on my arm! Is there nowhere safe from these people? Can’t a man even pick a lock in peace any more? And then there’s the cinema. There you are, sitting in some fancy little art cinema, watching its annual showing of “Citizen Kane.” The great masterpiece starts, there’s that wonderful series of dissolves leading us deeper and deeper into the secretive world of Xanadu, eventually into the title character’s room and there’s poor old Charles Foster Kane on his deathbed. We get to that shot of the snow globe with the snow covered cabin in it, and just as Welles is about to utter the immortal word “Rosebud,” some moldering meathead in the crowd dully croaks out the word “Braaaaiiins,” and then does it again and again, over and over like some demented, putrefying parrot! I tell you, you’ll never look at old Orson the same way again!

Then there’s the gym. At last count, around a third of my gym’s current members are zombies. In an enclosed space, you can imagine – the smell is dreadful. This problem can, to a certain extent, be dealt with through correct use of a gas mask, though this measure is a bit of a bother during cardio sessions and I have seen several living members pass out from their use. Then there’s the problem of over-reaching. For some reason, zombies seem to be convinced that they are especially strong. Needless to say, when every muscle and sinew in your body is slowly rotting away this is mere wishful thinking. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to pick up a pair of disembodied arms and throw them into the dumpster out back just because some stupid zombie thought he could bench press 400 pounds with his putrid limbs. And that’s the other thing – after the weights have come crashing down, who has to unload the bar and put the plates back on the rack? That’s right, it’s the human members! After all, the zombie in question can’t do it, his arms are gone! And the other zombie members are too busy shambling around, trying to figure out how to work the treadmill, or chasing after some of the more tasty-looking members!

This isn’t the worst of it, though. What really gets my cannoli is the way these things behave at restaurants. There you are trying to enjoy your lobster, stuffing the thing into your face like a teamster at a donut bar, and just a couple of tables over there’s a whole group of walkers pigging out on various entrails and intestines! The sight itself is nauseating enough, but they aren’t exactly the tidiest of eaters and it takes just seconds between the start of their meal and half the restaurant’s human diners being covered in bits of flesh and innards that have gone flying through the air. It’s like hail, I tell you. Then there’s what passes for dinner conversation amongst these people. Oh, the scintillating wit of such statements as “Ruuurhhh” and “Unhhhh.” It’s like listening to a bunch of Valley Girls trying to figure out how to use their Tivo! But at least, after the dinner there’s a concert to look forward to. Or is there?

What can one say of a heavy metal concert rudely interrupted by the unexpected devouring of the bass player? This is what happened at the last live gig I attended. Legendary speed metal band Armadillo Love were halfway through their classic “Mental Breakdown in the Key of F**k ‘Em All” when one of these disintegrating dunderheads wandered onstage, took a whiff of the drummer, threw up, and headed straight for the late lamented Darryl “Corpse-humper” Dingleberry! Where the hell was security? I know that there is often little distinction to be made between a blank-eyed, shuffling monstrosity and the average metalhead, but on smell alone the security guys should have known that the drooling thing stumbling around the stage was a little too pungent even by heavy metal standards. Perhaps everyone mistook the shambling, blank-eyed monstrosity for Ozzy Osbourne trying to make an impromptu cameo? Stranger things have happened – like that time Lemmy was made Archbishop of Canterbury. I must say, though, kudos to the band for continuing the concert even after the tragic end to their bassist’s career. Even as the remnants of Darryl’s body lay there, with the now-overfed zombie snoring loudly in a corner of the stage, the band continued to perform. True, they did have to replace Darryl with a guy from the audience who could make some pretty good bass guitar sounds with his mouth, but needs must when the devil vomits on your bedspread.

Now, I can’t say that I know what to do about this current zombie infestation, as I am no expert in such things. But there must be some way to get rid of these disease-ridden dirtbags. Perhaps we could fill one of the Great Lakes with hydrochloric acid, wait for a really hot day and then convince all the zombies to go for a nice, refreshing swim. Perhaps it’s as simple as giving them all one way tickets to Australia, a land that is both capacious, distant, and so hemmed in by water that there is no way the bastards would be able to make their way back without being devoured by sharks. Indeed, once in Australia the zombies would probably find themselves in the highly ironic position of being scarfed down by such renowned native predators as the Outback Dingo, the Suburban Wanker, and the Common Boofhead. Or perhaps we could build some very large steam rollers and get them to go around flattening these bastard things flat as pancakes, which we could then sell to fancy cafes – a nice cup of cat crap coffee with a stack of zombie pancakes, what discerning sophisticate could resist? I don’t know if any of these methods would work, what I do know is that I have had more than enough of zombies and all their crap, and that if I wake up to find that yet another zombie has tried to eat my garden gnomes I will probably end up making some very messy use of the weed-whacker.