Guess I’m too old for the zombie meme - it never did anything for me.  Now Godzilla jokes, that’s funny stuff right there.

Zombie jokes are funny because they occasion a rapid mental switch from the taboo of sex with the dead to the ridicule defense against incipient mortality which triggers the sexual imagery as a response to thoughts of mortality.  The mental whipsaw produces the ‘juxtaposition’ effect that we recognize as funny.

*puts out grasping hand* Research Genius Grant Please!

That one works in the same way that pirate jokes do.  Are Zombie jokes generally like that? 

I’m just bringing up the point so that I can repeat my favorite pirate joke:

Q:  What do you have if your neural network passes the Turing Test, but all the inputs are all conversations with pirates? 

A:  ARRRRRR-tificial intelligence.

What do vegetarian zombies eat?

GRAAAIIINNNSSS

I’ll play armchair analyst for a moment. Humans tend to make fun of others’ misfortune and impediments. I’m not saying this urge is a good thing all the time, but we do seem to enjoy pointing out the ways others are different and laughing at their outsider-ness and powerlessness. Zombies are mindless bags of stumbling flesh, but they’re not real, and they’re already dead and don’t have feelings, so we can find their helpless, single-minded (“Braaaaaaaains!”) state to be humorous without being jerks.

Totally off-topic, but this guy is a real piece of work: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080926/ap_on_re_us/children_safe_haven

You should be able to hunt up a versionof Jonathan Coulton’s “Re:  Your Brains”  on YouTube.  I recommend it warmly.  Zombies attack using business jargon.  Awesome.

People tend to fall into four groups of people.  Vampire People, Slasher People, Zombie People and Talking Animal People.

Vampire People are self-important and a little sexually repressed about something.  They also secretly want to be Vampires.

Slasher People have anger and self esteem issues.  They also secretly want to be serial killers.

Zombie People are cynics with excellent senses of humor.  They know EXACTLY what their Zombie survival plan is.

Talking Animal People will lineup to see that new talking Chihuahua movie and are not interested in movies that might scare them.

How about the zombie version of Madonna’s song “Rain”:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20020407&mode=classic

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=342

Here’s my own two cents on zombies:

We should have some Bush apologists here, so that we can understand zombiefication from the other side….........
# posted by The Dark Avenger : 9:59 AM

and this, from http://www.xkcd.com

Totally off-topic, but this guy is a real piece of work

I looked up some of the stuff from the TV station and he has the most depressing story ever.  Wife died in childbirth, nine kids, had to quit his job to try and take care of them ....

What the hell is wrong with this country that no one noticed this guy was totally overwhelmed before he dropped the kids off at the hospital?

I didn’t realize until now that there were such things as zombie jokes, or that zombies were funny to people.  (OK, one exception, the Halloween episode of The Simpsons in the library:  “Is this the end of zombie Shakespeare?”  But that’s more of a Shakespeare joke, I think.)  But then again I’ve never seen a zombie movie. 

Werewolves, that’s much funnier.

“Eat my lips. No New Taxes”.

This reminds me of a Lewis Black rant, where he proposes we elect a dead person as president in order to scare the shit out of terrorists and other enemies.

Like El Cid?  Or, as a friend put it, “a corpse on a horse, of course, of course…”

Zombies are handy to have around if you want to make your protest look like it’s got better attendance than it actually does…

http://www.quirkspace.com/comic/index.php?date=2007-07-06

...Not that Republicans ever do that sort of thing.

Best Simpsons zombie exchange:

Bart & Lisa : Dad we’ve done something terrible!
Homer : Did you wreck the car?
Bart & Lisa: No
Homer : Did you wake the dead?
Bart & Lisa : Yes!
Homer : But the car’s ok?

Who do Zombie republicans vote for?

McCaaaaaaaaainnnn!

Oh, that reminds me of a truly great song about zombie apocalypses! It’s by a band called the Sprites, and pays homage to all the great zombie flicks of yesteryear (“I learned everything from George Romero / Dario Argento / Maybe Tom Savini, Hershel Gorden and Sam Raimi” goes the chorus) by imagining how well they’d do in the same situation.

You can listen to it on their website, here. Click on the first song, “George Romero”. (Their song “Bionic Hands” is pretty good, too).

Zombie Bazooka Patrol is one of my favorite independent bands.

Zombies… Night of the Living Dead scared me to death and gave me nightmares forever. I still don’t like being outside after dark.

These days I’ve been writing them here and there.

I glanced at the newspaper on the doorstep and compared it to the one on my
desk.
    “Mayor in funeral home scandal.” Nothing new there. It seemed half the local political family lived in the family business, which was a funeral home. Even the ordinary folk knew that. The paper made it sound like typical chicanery. My paper read, “Undead voting rights in question. Mayor alleged to be identity-stealing ghoul.” Same story, different spins. Dead folk had been voting in elections for over a hundred and fifty years, but it got trickier when some of the dead folk sat up and demanded the right to pull the lever themselves.

garrity wrote:

You should be able to hunt up a versionof Jonathan Coulton’s “Re:  Your Brains” on YouTube.

You can download the mp3 here.
YouTube link here.

i like the four groupings. so… erm.. i have some sexual repression issues, anger issues, am totally cynical and think i have quite the sardonic sense of humor. if only i liked talking animals, i could be a werewolf type, no?

Fear of death & decay creates the zombie as a monster.
But monsters are inherently silly. What we really fear is the reality of death and decay. A zombie is so exaggerated a version of that, we really end up laughing instead of feeling afraid.
Laughing at things that were supposed to be frightening feels good, so the joke gets repeated.

A downer episode of BtVS would at the very least, end with the cutout animated zombie and very unconvincing “Grr. Arrrgh.”

Although, that was probably a very vitalist thing for me to say. Sorry, whereever you are, Constable Shoe.

‘Sweet Zombie Jesus’ as an exclamation always makes me giggle.

I noticed that reruns of “Futurama” censored out the phrase “zombie Jesus”.  WTH?

‘Sweet Zombie Jesus’ as an exclamation always makes me giggle.

Speaking of which, this is the best zombie joke I’ve ever seen.