Journal

I am a terrible, terrible person for even THINKING this…

42 Comments

I’ve been musing upon the ongoing problems in New Orleans. The stadium evacuation is being put on hold until the military can do it, because apparently the civilian rescuers weren’t up to the task of being mobbed and then SHOT AT by those they were there to rescue.

This, my friends, is what martial law is for. Civilization is never more than about three meals away from collapse, and when it collapses, even if only 10% of the population is making trouble, that’s about 100 times the number of troublemakers a “civilized” state is prepared to deal with. So let’s get un-civilized, declare martial law, and let the military handle it the way it needs to be handled.

Thinking about that is not what makes me a terrible person. Read on…

Well, WHILE I was thinking this, WHILE I was musing on the fact that people are starting to die from things a civilized state won’t let them die from — asthma, renal failure, diabetes, exposure — it occured to me that all this is happening in New Orleans.

Martial law. Bodies piling up. Armed gangs. All in NEW ORLEANS.

The only thing missing is ZOMBIES. In a city that embraces and glorifies the art and culture of the voudouin, there SHOULD be shambling, angry, hungry-for-living-flesh zombies, wading out of the depths towards those few places still above water…

Call Spielberg. No, wait… George A. Romero. He’s the expert. And if he thinks its too tasteless, maybe we can get Quentin Tarantino, Paul Verhoven, or Robert Rodriquez to direct.

–Howard

42 thoughts on “I am a terrible, terrible person for even THINKING this…”

    2. I just had another idea: have Deep Roy play the zombies. I mean, he did such a great job with the Oompa Loompas in C&CF.

      I can see it now: Johnny Depp in a sufficiently twisted role valiantly fighting off hordes of miniature zombies engaged in musical numbers.

  2. Romero, Tarantino, or Rodriguez, I’ll agree with you on.

    Paul Verhoven is a hack who should be shot for picking up any script. I wouldn’t let him direct a television movie of “Three’s Company: The Return of Crissy”.

  5. Just FYI, New Orleans is theoretically already under martial law, and there’s supposed to be 3,500 Louisiana National Guard troops in the city who are supposed to be enforcing it.

    1. But yeah, you’re right about the zombies.

      “Cue zombies. … CUE ZOMBIES. … Alright, where’s the zombies? There were supposed to be zombies. I wanna talk to their agent. I can’t work with this.”

  6. Brilliant!

    It’s perfect. No, you aren’t a horrible person for thinking this. It would be like that scene in “Galaxy Rangers” where the fan-boy gets told that it’s true — lots of gleeful jumping up and down, screaming, “I knew it!” After the horror, there would be a twisted kind of delight.

  8. I heard ABC had a movie about a florida town flooding from hurricanes and ALIENS coming in to take over that they just decided they might wait a few seasons to air.

  10. http://interdictor.livejournal.com/

    That’s the LJ of a guy working at a NOC in the central business district of new orleans (650 poydras, real close to the superdome). They stayed up through the hurricane and are still holed up in their building, have cam feeds and pictures as well of the unfolding events. That and the user-contributed stuff on nola.com (times-picuayne) and wwltv.com make for an interesting contrast to some of the stuff on the national news media.

    2. I posted that in Howard’s previous thread about wanting to take back the comment he made, just before the looting and gunfire at rescue workers thing hit CNN. You know, I have to wonder about people who think that shooting at someone who’s rescuing people will get them to rescue you faster than making them think ‘Gee, if I land there, I die…’

  12. Do they have to be just recent dead zombies?

    Well, I guess you have to have some sort of flesh for zombie-hood. But it would be cool to have all sorts of ghouls in historic gard wandering around too.

    And do zombies celebrate Mardi Gras? We need a hugh zombie party with a parade and balls and beads thrown everywhere. For some reason, I can’t imagine a New Orleans zombie shuffling their feet.

    Man, some Cajun fried chicken sounds good right now.

  13. On Saturday, I emailed my boneheaded buddy, who stayed in N.O., that, while his guns would be good against the zombies, how’d he handle the diseases.

    As for movies, for years, fans of Big Trouble in Little China have been hoping for Big Trouble in the Big Easy. Now, I guess it’ll be Kurt Russel in Escape from New Orleans.

  14. Something we can do to help

    Howard, your blog has a much greater reach than mine.

    Here’s something easy and sci-fi oriented we can do to help the victims of New Orleans.

    This from another list …

    (From Jennifer Roberson)
    >I’m spearheading a book drive for the hurricane evacuees now in the
    Astrodome. They have food, water, cots, plumbing, etc.; they now need things to fill the endless hours. I have contacted the local authorities and was given the following address for direct book donations (not to me):

    HURRICANE EVACUEES
    RELIANT ASTRODOME
    c/o RED CROSS
    2700 Southwest Freeway
    Houston, TX 77098

    Please mark the package as “BOOKS” or “READING MATERIALS”

    It might be particularly helpful to include some childrens’ books as well.

  17. I can’t write this story.

    But there has got to be someone around here who can.

    After rereading the comments to this entry, I saw that a friend of mine had quoted one congressman saying that it doesn’t make sense to rebuild a city 7 feet under sea level.

    The rest comes from an entry in my own journal in response:

    I could almost agree with this sentiment if it was about any other city but New Orleans. Not that I have any special feelings towards that city. I’ve never been there and I’m not one to be captured by any city’s mystic. But I have family and friends who have lived in or near the city at one time or the other. There are a few things I do know about New Orleans.

    New Orleans will never go away. It has a life-force of its own. Even it nothing is rebuilt, people will come back to New Orleans. People who believe in the deep magic of the place. Do not rebuild New Orleans and it will become the home of disaffected people and superstition, living by their own rules. It won’t go away, it will become its legends. People desperate for a connection to the supernatural and the mystical will still flock to the sinking city. Black and white magic will be openly practiced. There would be ingenious solutions and adaptations to the water contamination and other problems. It will become a different type of ghost city. Not abandoned, but where the ghosts walk with the living and the boundaries won’t be that easy to determine.

    Do not rebuild New Orleans and it will rebuild itself. It will draw upon its history and myths. It will become the antithesis of the rest of the industrial-minded US. She will be our Dark Lady, mocking our disbelief and practicalness. She would return our rejection with her own.

    And we can’t afford to let that happen.

    You know this would make such a cool story if it was written by someone who actually knew a lot more about the myths and legends of New Orleans than I. We could have those zombies and everything. Done right, it would be a chilling and compelling story.

    So, does anyone know someone who does have the background knowledge to do this right?

    1. For other reasons it will be rebuilt.

      You forgot that New Orleans will be rebuilt because it’s at the mouth of a major river, and this is where the port functionally needs to be, to transfer cargo from oceangoing vessels to river barges. And ports need workers, and people need places to live.

      That’s why it got built there in the first place, and those reasons haven’t changed.

  18. The zombie idea is wonderful. It also seems to be in the memespace. Guess that it was just time to invent railroads.
    You have to be able to laugh during a disaster. If we can’t then the human race might as well just pack it in tonight and save some time.

    On a completely unrelated matter, something is wrong with your webpage. I write this at 10 pm Wednsday night in GMT-5 (sort of. It is Indiana so sort of messed up.) Wednsday’s comic shows up. Usually by this time the next day’s comic shows up too. No such luck tonight. On the gripping hand, Friday’s comic is on the front page.

  19. Somewhat off-topic, but I don’t see anything about it in the forum, and I’m not sure how else to point this out:

    The daily-comic HTML pages for September don’t seem to be getting generated. I can view the images fine, but the Calendar/nav-links don’t work.

  20. Your wish has been granted…

    This story shows that martial law is being declared.
    Quote:
    “These troops are battle-tested. They have M-16s and are locked and loaded,” Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said on Thursday night of one group of 300 National Guard troops being deployed here after recent duty in Iraq. “These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will.”

    Normally, I’m very wary, but martial law was created exactly for this type of scenario. As long as it doesn’t last longer than it has to, the government needs to do what it must to keep peace and expedite aid to the people there. And we can’t do that when people are shooting at the soldiers giving them that aid. One guardsman has been shot in the leg, and shots have been fired at army helicopters. The helicopters can’t even land to drop off supplies anymore, or they’ll get rushed.

    Now is the time we need to crack down, and keep order, or more people will die and unecessarily at that.

  22. Zombie Jamboree

    Not the right town, but surely in the right spirit:

    (by CE Mauge, Jr.)

    Hey, Back to back, ha ha ha ha, hey, belly to belly
    Yes my friends
    Hey, Back to back, ha ha ha ha, hey, belly to belly

    It was a zombie jamboree
    Took place in the New York cemetery
    Oh, it was a zombie jamboree
    Took place in the New York cemetery

    Zombies from all parts of the island
    Some of them are great Calypsonians
    Since the season was carnival
    They got together in bacchanal
    And they were singing

    Back to back, ghoul, belly to belly
    Well, I don’t give a damn ’cause I’m stone dead already
    Back to back, oh oh oh, belly to belly
    It’s a zombie jamboree

    One female zombie she wouldn’t behave
    See how’s she’s dancing out of the grave
    In one hand she’s holding a quart of rum
    The other hand is knocking a conga drum

    You know the lead singer starts to make his rhyme
    While the other zombie is rockin’ in time
    One bystander, he had this to say
    “It was a trip to see the zombies break away”
    Shah! And they were singing

    Back to back, mon, belly to belly
    Well, I don’t give a damn ’cause I’m stone dead already
    Back to back, oh, belly to belly
    It’s a zombie jamboree

    And they were singing
    Back to back, mon, belly to belly
    Well, I don’t give a damn ’cause I’m stone dead already
    Oh, back to back, oh oh oh, belly to belly
    It’s a zombie jamboree

    Hey hey, back to back, everyone we sing, back to back
    And belly to belly then back to back
    One two three four

    Hey, what a zombie jamboree
    From Times Square to the Statue of Liberty
    Uptown, downtown zombie jamboree
    Whoa whoa whoa, yeah yeah

    There’s a high-wire zombie ‘tween the World Trades
    A King Kong zombie on the Empire State
    But the biggest zombies Tokyo to Rome
    The zombies who call the city home

    Hah, what they do, huh

    Back to back, ghoul, belly to belly
    Well, I don’t give a damn ’cause I’m stone dead already
    Back to back, oh oh oh, belly to belly
    It’s a zombie jamboree

    And they were singing
    Back to back, mon, belly to belly
    But I don’t give a damn ’cause I’m stone dead already
    Back to back, ha ha, belly to belly
    It’s a zombie jamboree

    I need the chorus
    Back to back, ghoul, belly to belly
    Well, I don’t give a damn ’cause I’m stone dead already, yeah
    Back to back, mon, belly to belly
    It’s a zombie jamboree

    Back to back, hey
    Back to back, mon, belly to belly
    Well, I don’t give a damn ’cause I’m stone dead already
    Back to back, ha, belly to belly
    It’s a zombie jamboree

    Sing the chorus
    Back to back, whoah, belly to belly
    Well, I don’t give a damn ’cause I’m stone dead already
    Back to back, ha ha, belly to belly
    It’s a zombie jamboree

    Do the limbo
    Back to back to back to back to belly
    I don’t give a damn ’cause I’m stone dead already
    Back to back, mon, belly to belly
    It’s a zombie jamboree

    One more time, yeah
    Back to back

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