HEY, INTERNET, STOP BEING SUCH CYNICAL EFFING DOUCHEBAGS BLOG-A-THON!

These are a few of may favorite thing that I am minorly, secretly, ashamed of. I know better than to love either one of them, but I can't help myself.

Andy Capp Hot Fries: These are basically plasticene rectangles with no food content whatsoever. They are of no value as food. But I love them. They are spicy and delicious. They are FunYuns for lovers of spicy food. When I was 14-16 I went to a home-school co-op in a small town about 20 minutes from my house. My Mother would pack up my brothers and I every morning and drive us out to Thompson, Oh for "Co-op." We would then get our heaping helping of socialization for the week, and we did. I made friends there that I have kept for the past 14 years, so it had real value. The day was split up into periods and we had to be at different classes at different times. All the classes were taught by home-schooling mothers. It was a good time, I learned a bit, but not as much as I probably was supposed to. I think I was probably getting too old by that point.

I'm bringing this around to Hot Fries, I promise.

There was an hour for lunch. Usually we packed our lunches, and as a not wealthy at all family, we usually had things that no one would be terribly excited to eat. But I started to have pocket money at about this time and I would walk, with my brother and our friend Alex Gardner, across the Thompson Square, to a little mini-mart, and buy Andy Capp Hot Fries. I have no idea how I originally chose these little treats. There must have been something about the packaging, thought I never liked Andy Capp as a character. (I disliked the air of spousal abuse that is such a great part of the strips humor. I know, I'm a prig.) But I just remember that I loved them. I would open the package just the slightest bit at the top. Then I'd crush down then fries into crumbs and tip the bag back over my mouth, taking half the bag at a crunchy, chewy, spicy gulp. It was delicious and it made me happy each time I did it. I would occasionally buy more than one bag, to save one for when I got home. But instead I'd always eat the other bag after the first.

To this day, when I see a bag of Hot Fries it takes all my effort to keep from purchasing them, and I frequently fail. I have never understood Andy Capp, and I think of Hot Fries as an incredibly white-trash snack, but I love them.

Zombies: Is there anything of worth about zombies? I mean, honestly, anything? I don't think that there is. They are the id of American popular art. I can't think of a redeeming quality that zombie stories have. When Pandora opened the box of troubles, there remained hope. Zombie moves begin with all hope gone, and end without hope returning. (The exception is 28 Days Later, but that isn't REALLY a zombie movie. It's a horror movie with zombie-like beings. In contrast, 28 Weeks Later IS a zombie movie. It knows that there is no chance of returning the planet to a livable status quo post-zombie. It teases us, at the start, with the idea that zombies have been eradicated, but we know it isn't true. Further, it shows that zombification is not like hypnosis, you will do things as a zombie that are against your most basic intentions as a human being. Zombie nature is the farthest form of human nature, the worst of the worst.)

But, zombies are glorified evil. They are the most base, the most evil, the least redeemable or redeemed of all the villians. In zombies we see America, we see our values, our civilization and our desires perverted and destroyed... with NO hope. That is what is rotten about zombies. (If you'll allow the pun.)

But I love them. I love them staggering and slow or lightning fast. I like to see them eat humans and tear us apart. I like to see their heads explode from bullets, axes or LPs. I enjoy everything about zombies and I harbor happy little fright fantasies about the zombie menace becoming real.

JJ Abrams created the film Cloverfield in order to create an American monster. I read an interview where he talked about being in Japan with his son and noticing the Godzilla is everywhere. (I am in Okinawa, Japan right now and I have no idea what he is talking about in this interview, but I guess it must just be mainland Japan.) At any rate, he wanted to create a uniquely American monster. A monster that we could relate to our culture, a monster that is a satire for Americanism, for our form of patriotism and our national notions. He created some damn monster, I didn't see the film, but I haven't seen it grasp anyone like Godzilla seems to have grasped Japan. I would argue that the gap he was trying to fill is already filled by zombies.

Zombies are our satirized selves. They tell us about our consumerism, our fascination with media and our ability to rationalize. They tell us that we are a hair's breadth from a terrible future.

They remind us of the need to deny our natures.

People talk about their nature all the time. They talk about being born this way or that. They talk about finding themselves. They talk about the purity of the natural state. They are talking about being zombies.

In our natural state we use everything as a latrine, we eat whatever we can get, raw. We are filthy, naked, cold, and miserable. The desire for betterment and the denial of self, the denial of nature, that is what makes humans better. In zombie movies the people who are selfless are the ones who cause good things to happen. Those who are self-centered, those who seek their own desires, those who accept themselves as they are and do not strive for betterment, those are the ones who become zombies and cause the most damage.

Zombies teach us about life and nature. Zombies teach us about civilization and the need for self-abnegation.

At least, if you think a WHOLE LOT about them, they do.

If, for instance, you are the kind of person who wants to rationalize their love of a hipster fad. If you are the kind of person who likes to talk about great zombie moments and thinks the George Romero is a great master of ideas. (And perhaps has the entire tag-poem for Monkey Shines memorized.) Then you might have a really good reason for liking something with no discernable value, like zombies.

Anyways, thanks Final Girl, for letting me write about my guilty pleasures and tell the world how much I like things I probably shouldn't.