Guess What My Interest Is

My interests in life are many. My obsessions (thankfully) are few. The zombie is easily my longest-standing, nightmare-inducing, cold sweat-making obsession. And I don't mean just any old zombie; I mean the concept of the walking dead as told by cheap-horror-movie great George Romero. Sure, zombies can be found in history - the word is credited by many as having roots in an African language (nzambi being the most commonly found variant in my experience), brought here by the victims of the slave trade and eventually made a part of the voudoun religion (a hybrid of many religions such as African tribal religions and, surprisingly to many who know nothing of what "voodoo" is, Catholicism). The Haitian voudoun zombie predates Hollywood by quite a bit, and there are documented records of persons who were dead and then brought back to "life" by a voudoun priest/ess. Mainly this was used to create a slave for the fields - a mindless laborer. There is also documentation which shows that voudoun priest/esses can utilize a powder somehow derived from a blowfish to make a drug which puts a person in a catatonic state with pulse and breathing so slowed that the victim is buried alive, later to be unearthed by the holy person or those who may have paid for the service.

But that's not my point.

My point is that I am obsessed with zombies in a more modern sense of the word; the mindless flesh-cravers wandering the earth in search of a good bite to eat. I don't care whether they were caused by a mutation, by toxic waste, by space dust, by a mysterious virus, or by some other half-explained means. I don't care whether they're fast or slow, and I don't care whether they retain partial memory of their former life. (Well I do, but I'm making a point and I'm trying not to get side-tracked with particulars.)

I'm just obsessed with zombies.

More soon.

Image from Romero's 1968 Night of the Living Dead.