Hi, friends!

It has been quite some time since my last post. As you can imagine, it is difficult to find a place to sit on the internet for more than a couple minutes. I started working on an entry last night that should be posted here very soon. In the meantime...

A lovely young woman (inside and out) named Nina recently did an Icebreaker Speech in the Toastmasters group I attend,and she has given me permission to share with you all. It touched me deeply. You may have to read through a little bit to understand why. Here is the full text:

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Toastmasters Speech (9.2)
All About Zombies ...
by Nina Lindsey
September 2, 2011

Thank you Mr. President, distinguished guests and fellow Toastmasters,

I come to you today to speak about a topic that is so life changing, so intricate and so taboo that it is rarely talked about in such distinguished company. I am here to talk about zombies.

Now, I am not just the ZMBEGRL – I am really the Bard of Zombies. I love everything about zombies. I love the original zombie that you may have seen in early movies like George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. These zombies are slow, focused and hungry. I love the new zombies, seen in the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake and other movies like 28 Weeks Later. These zombies are fast, crazy and still hungry. And I love what we call “Zombies with Jobs.” These are zombies who were killed “in the line of duty” so to speak and have been resurrected still wearing their work uniforms. These could be police officers, gas station attendants, cheerleaders and, my personal favorite, the zombie bride.

Now, I have been married and divorced twice and so I hold a special place in my heart for the zombie bride. Because as a bride and wife, I often felt like a zombie. Stumbling through my days with not enough sleep because I was lying awake at night wishing someone would just blow my brains out. And it was in this way, I became very interested in the societal implications of the zombie. And I came up with 3 metaphors for how I use the zombie to reflect on my own life.

The first is that the defining characteristic of a zombie is an insatiable need to feed. Zombies can never get enough brains. They don’t sleep, they don’t get full and they don’t stop eating. Zombies don’t stop to think “Should I eat this brain? I already had 3 meals today and they have all been fast food since they were running away from me.” In a lot of ways, most of us share this quality. We can never consume enough – what we consume is different (hopefully we’re not eating brains) but whether it’s eating, drugs, alcohol, sex, work or shopping, we are a culture of excess. (Shopping is an interesting one because we shop without regard for what we actually need. Which as a side note is why many zombie movies take place in shopping malls – it’s a social commentary on the concept of excess and desire).

The second metaphor is how we interact with the zombie. Zombie movies are known for their blood, gore and incessant murder. Generally, you are either a zombie or you’re not. If you’re not a zombie, chances are you are obsessed with killing them before they eat you. But, the zombies aren’t different from us. At one point, they were us. And so how do we interact with the parts of ourselves that have become gross, wounded and unmanageable? Well, in zombie movies and I think in real life, we become obsessed with killing them. We go out of our way to hide our association with those qualities – we pretend they don’t exist.

The last metaphor is similar to the previous one but it brings out a more global perspective. Not only do we hide, kill, maim or just plain ignore parts of ourselves that are bloody and gross – we also hide, kill, maim or just plain ignore parts of our society that are uncomfortable for us. In zombie circles there is a very direct and interesting correlation between zombies and homelessness. Homeless people are treated like the modern day zombies of our society. We quarantine them, we hide them away, we shun them because they consume precious resources and we de-value them to the point that we kill them spiritually.

Now, I realize that things just got a little bit heavy in here. And I went back and forth about that and finally decided that it’s important to me that people know that yes, I have an unnatural love for the dead and the undead. Loving zombies is a bit of a quirky hobby. But it’s one that I take very seriously for exactly the reasons I shared above. Zombies, to me, are more than just undead cannibals looking for their next meal. They are me. They are us. And I am committed to embracing the parts of myself and my community that are dirty and uncomfortable. Because, zombie or not, we all have value.
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Bravo, Nina! Bravo!