Unplanned, Unscripted, Unhinged and Undead | Zombie Book Club Podcast ep 56

Leah and Dan, with the energy of a rotting ghoul, take a winding, unplanned journey through this podcast and discuss everything and nothing all at once. What is this episode about? After listening to it twice during editing, we honestly couldn't tell you, but it was a fun ride.

Work life, the world, daily survival is beating us all down. Some more than others, and we take a moment to talk about those of us who are truly suffering and acknowledge our privilege in the grand scheme of things.

We hope you enjoyed this mess. Also, Dans gun is purple.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:20

Welcome to Zombie Book Club, the only book club that's unplanned and completely unscripted, because we didn't plan ahead and think about anything for this episode, especially not this intro. But there will be zombies. There might be a zombie. Yeah, it's possible, no promises. Yeah, I'm Dan and I'm a writer and I'm writing a book. It'll be good.

Speaker 2 0:48

And it has zombies. It will have zombies, yes, but it has a story beyond zombies.

Speaker 1 0:53

It's true, there are people in it, and there's a truck driver in it.

Speaker 2 0:56

There is, yeah, named Teddy the Bear. He's a bear, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:01

He's an actual bear. What kind of bear is he? He's a grizzly bear, so got big claws, he's a bear.

Speaker 2 1:05

Yeah, he's an actual bear. What kind of bear is he? He's a grizzly bear, hmm.

Speaker 1 1:07

Yeah, so got big claws. Yeah, big claws. People are going to think that I have an anthropomorphic story like animals in the apocalypse, or Teddy's actually a bear.

Speaker 2 1:17

Honestly, I have not seen that book and now I kind of want a POV book of animals in the apocalypse.

Speaker 1 1:23

Yes, you know what, somebody out there. If you want to make that, we will read it.

Speaker 2 1:31

But also I don't think that that book would. It would have to be a world where the animals can't get the virus because or at least for me, my version is they don't get the virus because then it's basically just a really happy story about how they reclaim the earth. Oh, and their children don't get run over earth. Oh, and their children don't get run over because humanity. You know, like the beginning of covid, yeah, when uh, nobody was outside, the animals started coming out a little more they.

Speaker 2 1:54

Yeah, that is true, that is what happened yeah birds came back that'd be the story I'd write from the animal point of view. Yeah, yeah, or maybe maybe humans are like food for uh grizzly bears also, I'm leah I was wondering when you were going to intro yourself.

Speaker 2 2:10

I'm, I'm leah, this is what happens when we have no plans, and I had my eyes dilated today as part of a regular eye checkup, and that is also why we have no plans, because I can't read anything. My eyes are just starting to get back to normal and, uh, let me tell you, I've also thought a lot about my ability to survive with my eyesight without augmentation like contacts or glasses a lot today. Yeah, what's that like so? Um well, with the eyes dilated, everything was extremely bright and that was unpleasant. I felt even more like a vampire than I usually do on a regular basis, so did you like when he came outside?

Speaker 1 2:47

did you just like hiss at the sun?

Speaker 2 2:49

I did. I was like this is not okay and I was wearing sunglasses. I was wearing sunglasses inside because it was too bright inside. Yeah, I also picked a new pair of glasses with dilated ice, so we'll see if I like yeah you put them on and you're like these things are fucking dark.

Speaker 1 3:08

Why did I pick sunglasses that were basically just spray painted?

Speaker 2 3:12

Yeah, I don't know, we'll see. But that's me. I'm Leah.

Speaker 1 3:17

And today, if you haven't picked it up.

Speaker 2 3:18

This is the most casual dead.

Speaker 1 3:21

It's really casual.

Speaker 2 3:22

It's a Wednesday. It's a Wednesday. Yeah, dan, if you can hear weird sounds in the background, it's really casual. It's a wednesday. It's a wednesday. Yeah, dan.

Speaker 2 3:26

If you can hear weird sounds in the background, it's our dog chewing something he's just hacking stuff, hacking away yeah, dan got to take the day off to drive me home, because I can't drive with dilated eyeballs, yeah, and I can't really work, which is wonderful because I've been working, uh, pretty much ceaselessly for the last three weeks. Yeah, this project I'm doing that will be over soon and then I will be able to relax. But until it is over, I feel like I'm in a multi week birthing labor process and it's painful, even if it's not coming out of my genitals.

Speaker 1 3:59

Yeah, it's like coming out of your fingers and your mouth.

Speaker 2 4:02

Yes, and I had to make painful decisions every day.

Speaker 1 4:06

Yeah, you know, what's funny is that I also had to get my pupils dilated a little while back. I have some extreme light sensitivity issues, also a vampire. Basically, if I go outside and I don't have sunglasses on, I get a migraine instantly, like within 30 seconds. I'm just like oh the sun, oh my head, oh this sucks, um. So I've been trying to tell the va for like years there's something wrong with my eyes, guys, and they're like yeah, but your vision's fine and I'm like that's, that's not the problem.

Speaker 1 4:40

Uh, so they, they, they. They had me go to an optometrist and put these uh, these drops in and again, like I was in a pitch black room with like maybe like a little bit of like light cascading in and I was just sitting in the dark with sunglasses on because I'm like it's so bright in here um that was me today, so I kind of had your eyesight and then they were like yeah, you'll be fine to drive home.

Speaker 1 5:09

No, and I did. I did drive home. I could see fine in that distance, but I couldn't see the speedometer or my hands or anything that's our future, for one future, and we're gonna need reading glasses.

Speaker 2 5:20

I imagine it's sort of like that yeah who listens to us also needs um eye care. Help to see. I'm not one of those lucky people like dan that has perfect eyesight and, yes, some light sensitivity, but yeah this guy can see in the dark.

Speaker 1 5:35

He's basically a super villain, yeah my, my actual vision is 2008, or possibly more, that they the the chart ran out of words after I read it. I I remember one time and this might have been years ago they're like read, read the smallest letters you can see. And I'm like usp-a-t-e-n-t. I started reading the copyright at the bottom corner of it and they're like where do you see that? I'm like it's the copyright information at the bottom corner of it. And they're like where do you see that? I'm like it's the copyright information at the bottom.

Speaker 1 6:06

We're like okay, you pass well, you know something wonderful, dan you will likely need reading classes one day it happens to us all with age I mean I have to read my phone at a, at a distance so I'm already like grandpa style phoning right now.

Speaker 2 6:22

I do think you might be able to benefit from reading glasses now, but I know that your your wonderful eye skills I genetic eye lottery that you have is probably hard to let go of. I, on the other hand, have been wearing glasses since I was 10 and I remember the first time that I saw leaves on trees oh, and I'm sure I must have seen them earlier. I don't know, maybe my eyesight was always terrible, I just didn't know, but they're like. So there's like detail and veins on the leaves and like serrated edges, and I could see like different leaves instead of just sort of this hazy, green, uh, top of a tree, which is what it looked like to me before yeah, just like a, like a cauliflower of trees.

Speaker 1 7:02

Yeah, broccoli, I want cauliflower but I meant to say broccoli. I think I could survive, just like a cauliflower of trees, yeah, or a broccoli. I want cauliflower, but I meant to say broccoli.

Speaker 2 7:08

I think I could survive in the zombie apocalypse without my glasses. Yeah, I do.

Blind Shooting and Podcast Plans

Speaker 1 7:12

Question We've had this conversation before. I have with me my podcast gun. Yes, and you've said that you would be able to shoot a gun with bad eyesight. Yeah, and I want you to tell me if you can see the sights.

Speaker 2 7:28

Yeah, the sights are easy because they're close up.

Speaker 1 7:30

Well, you are also holding it up to your eye. Well, how do you do it? You hold it at arm's length, uh-huh, and now you have to put the sights on your target.

Speaker 2 7:41

So, like over there, yes, but I'm nearsighted, which, first of all, I need to clarify something. We do not have an actual podcast gun. Dan has a pinkish sheep, I guess, like a fuchsia. That's purple, it's not purple it's like a fuchsia. It's like a blue it's a bluey pink leaning towards purple. That's not a full purple it is 100 purple. I don't agree. It's too red to be purple. That is my eye power is I can see more colors yes, my podcast gun is a toy gun yes anyways, that's.

Speaker 2 8:10

That's all leo was trying to say we need to take a picture of this, yeah, and we need to pull the people. But even if everybody agrees with you, I still am right no, you're not.

Speaker 1 8:21

You're not.

Speaker 2 8:22

If everybody agrees with me, that means I'm right but the thing I need to correct you with, because I think people with good eyesight don't understand what it means to be nearsighted or farsighted, because you just see shit. What it means is that it was like if, if I had to hold the gun as far away as you are from me, which is like three, maybe four feet no, I could not see the site, but here I can see it just fine. That's close enough that I could see it.

Speaker 1 8:45

Yeah, but can you see a target beyond that?

Speaker 2 8:47

The target would be fuzzy wuzzy but I know it's there.

Speaker 1 8:50

That's my point is that the fuzzy wuzzy part is the hard part.

Speaker 2 8:54

I don't think so, because I don't need to see what the person's eye color is to know that I can get them in the brains.

Speaker 1 9:00

Yeah Well, you know, agree to disagree. I you don't know what it's like to have my eyesight.

Speaker 2 9:09

You don't know what it's like to shoot a gun, but that in theory, let's assume I'm trained okay let's assume that yes let's assume I know how to shoot a gun.

Speaker 2 9:15

I think I could still shoot a gun relatively accurately without my eyesight. The bigger issue with being nearsighted in a zombie apocalypse is if there was not an easily discernible way that people walked if they were alive versus zombies, there wasn't something that I could like see, that wasn't a detail about them from a relative distance away, then I think zombies could get really close to me before I'd realize, like I would have no idea. At 100 feet they would just be a shadowy figure. I could shoot that shadowy figure to be clear, but I wouldn't know who I was shooting, and that's not a good idea.

Speaker 1 9:51

I see, okay, I actually do know what it's like to be blind and have to shoot. You're blind, you've been blind. I was blinded during my qualification in the Army.

Speaker 2 10:01

Why did they? What do you mean by nobody?

Speaker 1 10:04

blinded me. I was blinded during the qualification in the army. I had a rifle that was a bit loose. Um, they training weapons are usually pretty clunky that they rattle a lot because they've been used by so many different people. They've been thrown around, beaten up. They're not good at being a gun and every time I fired the gases from that blowback and cycle the bolt backwards would then travel through the body of the rifle and come out of the stock right under my eye and it would blow oil and debris into my eyes. So I literally couldn't see anything and I couldn't keep my eyes open. I could only guess.

Speaker 2 10:52

Oh, that's very unpleasant.

Speaker 1 10:54

And I ended up using my left eye and just approximating where I was pointing the rifle downrange to hit my targets.

Speaker 2 11:04

And you were able to hit your targets.

Speaker 1 11:06

Yeah, I hit every single one.

Speaker 2 11:08

So you would be able to do things without perfect vision, but me, I detect lay sexism.

Speaker 1 11:16

I detect a sense of ego here. It is without eyesight to hit your target. Is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 11:22

Yeah, but you had actually. What you're saying is different than what I'm describing. You had one eye. That's different.

Speaker 1 11:28

Yeah, and I couldn't see my targets. I couldn't see what I was pointing at. You couldn't see it at all. Everything was blurry.

Speaker 2 11:36

Okay, well, I'm just saying that you should not assume, because you cannot see through my eyes, and I think this is an important moment to bring up ableism. See through my eyes and I think this is an important, uh moment to bring up ableism, and I'm not saying that everybody with imperfect vision or impaired vision could hit a target moving, a moving zombie well, yeah, but I'm saying that, with the vision that I have, I could do it.

Speaker 2 11:58

I just might also be killing a person that's alive, and that's the bigger problem. Yeah, the bigger problem is I might think that you're a zombie because you know you're in a lot of, you have a lot of back pain or whatever, and you're moving a little bit shuffly and, to be safe, I just shoot you. That's what I think is more likely and, yes, I would have to get better at shooting guns in general. But, like, let's assume I have basic markmanship mark. Why is mark? Why is it? Why is it markmanship? Why it's?

Speaker 2 12:23

marksmanship why is it? Well, why? Why? Why has it got to be a man in there? I don't know. Why am I a woman? Why am I like markswomanship woman some, but just like marks, uh, marks per, really in person. See, it's got a dude thing in it. It's annoying. This is why there was a brief period of time where cis women were putting an X instead of E in women. Did you know about that?

Speaker 1 12:47

I didn't. Yeah, it was a thing. Tell me about it.

Speaker 2 12:49

Basically it was a feminist, like one feminist lens of like saying we are not like derived from men, because that whole language thing is coming out of beliefs, like Eve came out of Adam's rib, oh yeah, because like a woman is a derivative of a man.

Speaker 1 13:07

Stupid way of thinking how a human being was created, even if in by magical means yeah, let's not even go there also I love what if somebody believes on that in this podcast.

Speaker 2 13:17

you know, if you're christian, it's cool, and I think we can say that whatever form of christianity we have today has been filtered through an extremely patriarchal lens.

Speaker 1 13:27

Yeah, so what are we talking about?

Speaker 2 13:29

I don't know Ollie gave us some ideas, because if I hold my phone really close to my face, I can read yeah. So Ollie and I were chatting back and forth a little bit and I said, ollie, we're about to have a recording and I don't know what we're talking about. Do you have any ideas? So let's see if any of these ideas will work for us today. Okay, okay, um, oh no, I just read the most recent one. Maybe we need to call ollie and put them on.

Speaker 2 13:56

Put them on I don't know, because they said you also have the option of getting that maze author on for discussion. I hear they have five days off with no plans oh well, too late for that maybe this weekend, ollie, we'll have to talk.

Zombie Games, Movies, and Kills

Speaker 2 14:10

We'll talk about that later, but yes, I do really want to talk about maze, because it is very fun. Uh, here's some other options. Have you two discussed your top 10 favorite zombie books, movies and games? I thought that's what this podcast is, but we haven't done like a top 10 we haven't um, I don't, I, I, I don't know, I would like. That would require so much thought to even comprise let's just go with our guts for, like number one zombie game game that you've played, project zomboid what's project?

Speaker 1 14:39

zomboid, it's a video game. Top it's a top down isometric view, retro styled zombie survival video game. What does isometric mean? Isometric is hard to describe. Uh, it's how a lot of games, uh, a lot of quote-unquote three 3d games looked like back in the nintendo and sega days. Um, in the in the 90s they couldn't make a 3d game so they made more of like a two and a half d game, which was isometric interesting. You could see things at like a side, top down diagonal view.

Speaker 2 15:23

Could I play this game in any kind of decent fashion? Is it like somewhat in the degree of mario brothers, the originals?

Speaker 1 15:31

no well, I mean, the mario brothers are like that's like a platformer, that's a two-dimensional platformer, um, and this is kind of more like 3d. So it's it. You, you see a, an approximation of a 3D world, but it's not fully 3D.

Speaker 2 15:47

And why is it the best zombie game ever? From just a gut reaction point of view, Well, they've been working on it since 2012.

Speaker 1 15:56

So they've been making this game good for 12 years and they've had a lot of time to just add stuff to it and really refine it 12 years, wow. And they haven't had to of time to just add stuff to it and really refine it All the years. And they haven't had to focus really hard on things like graphics, because they nailed that right out of the gate. They made it really simple and old school styled and because there's not that many graphics, you don't need a crazy huge, powerful computer to run it, which means that you can also put as many zombies in the game as you want you.

Speaker 1 16:27

The player can decide how many zombies there are well it, depending on the game, can put as many zombies as it wants okay, and is that why you like it?

Speaker 2 16:36

because you can be like uh, playing against a full-on horde of zombies no, it's just.

Speaker 1 16:42

It's a really good survival game, so they've been able to like really focus on what makes the game interesting and fun, instead of focusing on visual elements. Um, so, like the, the game will have like thousands and thousands of zombies in it and you can attract all of them if you're an idiot and you just run around making a lot of noise, um, and that sounds fun. There's a lot of screenshots of people, like just like the entire screen, just nothing being nothing but zombies, fully zoomed out. Um, but the big thing is just like they they really realistically depict how hard it is to scavenge for food and water and supplies in the zombie apocalypse. It's just an open world, this fun place to survive.

Speaker 1 17:28

So it has some realism, even though it's very basic graphics I'd say it's the most realistic, without being like, like, without hindering you with its complexity, interesting you know my favorite zombie game what's your favorite zombie game?

Speaker 2 17:44

asking you what your favorite zombie game is and then trying to come up with questions to ask you more about it, when I know nothing about games because I don't have a favorite zombie game. I think I could have a favorite zombie game if we played the Walking Dead RPG together. I think I could enjoy that, especially when I got a suggestion to just be mute from Ollie and just not talk. That would be less scary for me to play a role playing game because I'm shy.

Speaker 1 18:11

Yeah, that sounds really hard to run a game like that.

Speaker 2 18:15

Yeah, we'll have to ask Ollie more about it. Ollie, you're basically here in spirit because you were the last second inspiration for what we were going to talk about. What else does?

Speaker 1 18:23

Ollie, tell us.

Speaker 2 18:24

Let's see, this is what you can do. You can ask us anything and we'll just randomly put it on air, especially in weeks where it's pure life chaos. Um well, they ask for movies or books and I feel like those are harder and I have a recency bias. So I want to say blood quantum. That's my favorite movie, but I don't know if I were to look at them all it's is really great, but would I choose that over Girl with All the Gifts? I'd have to go back and listen to that episode to decide.

Speaker 1 18:51

It's hard because in the zombie apocalypse genre there's so many that are good for so many reasons.

Speaker 2 18:58

Yeah.

Speaker 1 18:59

And I mean honestly. I want the thing that is all the things to me. And the only thing right now that is all the things is the Walking Dead, and it's not a movie.

Speaker 2 19:10

I agree with that. I think it is the best series out there. I know some people hate it, which is so fascinating to me. I know that CJ, one of our listeners, has also requested that we do like a top. They said top 20. And I was like, oh, that's a lot, top 20 books. But I think we should do a top 10 books post someday, someday. I think we need to be. I think we could do that for our 100th episode when we have read I mean I need to catch up to you and when you're not working?

Speaker 2 19:36

yeah, in the winter time, yeah.

Speaker 1 19:38

Another question ollie has is most memorable zombie kills I do actually have one for this, okay, uh, is this zombie kills, as in a survivor killing a zombie, or a zombie killing a survivor?

Speaker 1 19:52

I mean, I am not, I did not write this question, so pick your poison way yeah uh, day of the dead, when all the zombies break out of their cages and overrun all of the soldiers that are in the underground bunker. There's a scene where, uh, the one of one of the one of the dudes that you really don't like so much gets his head ripped off, and while they're ripping his head off, like his larynx gets stretched while he's screaming, and his scream just gets higher and higher pitch as they're stretching his larynx out.

Speaker 2 20:26

Oh, that's horrible.

Speaker 1 20:28

It is and it's my favorite.

Speaker 2 20:30

You know what's funny? This is just, I think, a good example of how my brain works, which is like I'm really hard pressed except for anything that I've watched recently to be like oh yeah, that was a really great zombie kill, as in the person being killed by zombies, because again, I'm like'm like. Well, the most recent one I saw was blood quantum, when a certain character, I don't want to say, gets ripped apart by a horde of zombies. But I think there are better ones than that and I just don't remember them.

Speaker 1 20:54

But I oh go ahead well, I, I'm actually um, enjoying more movies that have fewer kills in them, like, uh, the night eats the world, like very few zombie kills in that movie and that made it so much more intense and interesting to me that, like in that case, the survivor survived by avoiding conflict and because he avoided conflict so much, you feel as though each encounter with each zombie is so much more intense, so that by the end of the movie, when they are rushing up the stairs and there's just a horde of them that feels like a really bad time to be chased by zombies is when every single zombie has been so intense.

Speaker 2 21:45

That makes sense because the buildup is strong and you're not getting desensitized. I don't have. I'm going to, I will pay more attention and come back with an answer for this one. Again, I think this one needs some preparation and some like thinking through of different examples. But I do have a favorite gross zombie, zombie, zombie. It's like mommy, but a zombie, a zombie, mommy, zombie.

Speaker 1 22:06

Yeah.

Speaker 2 22:10

Thank you for listening to us. Thank you for listening to us. I think a classic for me and one of the things that made me fall in love with the Walking Dead was when Glenn had to get the zombie out of the well.

Speaker 1 22:23

Yeah.

Speaker 2 22:24

And that was season. I know that was the farm season. Is that season two, season two? Yeah, a lot of people say they don't love season two, but I really liked it at the farm and I especially liked Glenn trying to show off to Maggie. I think that was his reasoning. But I could be wrong to get this zombie that was in the bottom of the well. But the zombie was extremely waterlogged and got like I don't know how would you. It was disgusting, that's all I know. Dan, you, the writer, describe it.

Speaker 1 22:48

He was bloated, very bloated, and like bluey gray yeah, he was waterloggedged and he was also rotting and he just kind of exploded and fell apart.

Speaker 2 22:57

Yeah, what a terrible way to contaminate water. Yeah, that was a theme that carried on in the Walking Dead. I really liked how they brought that back with Negan. Was it Negan who contaminated their water at?

Speaker 1 23:09

No, who was that? That was one of the doctors, you mean when everybody got sick at Alexandria.

Speaker 2 23:15

Yeah, but wasn't that because of Negan that they did it?

Speaker 1 23:20

No, I think it was the Whisperers.

Speaker 2 23:23

Yeah, who knows? Oh, that's right, it was an undercover Whisperer, it was a spy Whisperer. Yeah, you know what Alexandria needed in the Walking Dead as a walled community? They needed a citizenship test and it needed to include questions like do you plan to conduct espionage? I mean, I had to answer that question as a Canadian coming to the United States.

Speaker 1 23:48

Do you plan on to conduct espionage? Yes, I mean no.

Speaker 2 23:53

But, yes, a lot of those questions. I think we're mostly testing for people's ability to reason what else did I never? Heard of it like what is espionage?

Speaker 1 24:05

okay, well that's kind of what um uh at alexandria I forget what her name was the person who was running it before rick's group showed up. That's what she would do. Name was the person who was running it before Rick's group showed up. That's what she would do. She was interviewing them and she was like a human lie detector because she was so good at reading people.

Speaker 2 24:23

Diana, I think her name was yeah, and they did do those video recordings of them.

Speaker 1 24:25

Yeah, and they recorded them and then they based their decision, based on her gut instinct of who these people are.

Speaker 2 24:32

And Diana was not around when the whisperers were no, she's been dead a long time at that point.

Speaker 1 24:39

Yeah, um, rick also had his, his three questions um how many? How many people have you killed? How many walkers have you killed and why?

Speaker 2 24:49

yeah, those are good questions and and it wasn't.

Speaker 1 24:52

It wasn't what the answers were that he was looking for. He was looking for how they answered those, those questions what is the right way to answer that question?

Speaker 1 25:02

I don't know if there is a right way, but it was. It was all about his instinct and his ability to read people. So, like somebody might be like, yeah, I've, I've killed 20 people and, and he'll ask why, and maybe their answer is just something like they needed it, they needed to go, and he'll be able to tell whether or not. Like, was this malicious? Is this a person that's just killing because they enjoy killing, or did they actually need to do it? And it was a difficult decision for them? And yeah, what alexandria lacked was somebody who could read people as well as either rick or diana that's true.

Speaker 2 25:46

Well, but rick, I mean he was doing it before, but clearly it was maybe not as effective later on in the show he was gone. Oh, that's right, he was gone when the whisperers were there. Yeah, he never met. He totally missed that. Wow, yeah, because negan was in the show, he was gone. Oh, that's right, he was gone when the whisperers were there.

Speaker 2 25:55

Yeah, he never met, he totally missed that, wow, yeah, because negan was in the prison and then got right okay. It's days like today where I think about how hard the zombie apocalypse would really be, because I have a sinus headache. I still can't see 100 properly. I can read again, but it's like hard and I don't feel so good. And on a day like today, like if I had to like run from some zombies or like do anything to like survive, it would really suck yeah, my back hurts a lot today.

Speaker 1 26:25

Um, it's a little bit better now, but, like earlier today, I feel like if there was a horde of zombies after me, I'd just be like you run ahead, I'm gonna stand my ground and hope for the best, and that's I mean. That's something that I think about when I'm writing, like especially my character, teddy, who's a kodiak bear I thought he was a grizzly bear now you're changing. What about a polar bear? He's a polar bear is he white?

Speaker 1 26:51

if he's white, he should be a polar bear, yeah, but anyways, his, his character is a lot like me. He's just a big guy with some injuries and there might be a point where he's just like like I there, there's no sense me slowing the rest of you down. I'm not, I'm not going to be able to outrun these things, and he might just turn around and be like I'm gonna fight him and if I win, I win.

Speaker 2 27:18

If I lose, oh, that's unfortunate that reminds me of the grandfather in blood quantum. He stayed and fought. Yeah, I think he might have won he might have yeah, they're, they're. They leave us with a mystery on that one. We didn't talk about it on that episode, but he decided to stay and fight to defend his land from the white zombies and there was a moment where I thought he was gone then that he popped back up again yeah, and he had that sword sequence at the end.

Rap Battle Game Show and War

Speaker 1 27:42

Yeah it was amazing it was just like yeah, I'm, I'm staying, I'm staying here yeah, well, I wanted to say that normally we'd have groans from the horror.

Speaker 2 27:50

This is our second casual dead in a row that we have failed to include groans from the horde, but this time is reasonable because, dan, you don't like to read things out loud and I can't read that much stuff out loud. I will just say, as usual, we like you all. Thanks for talking to us, thanks for listening to this one, I don't know. Tell me what you liked about this episode and what we could have done better. If we were gonna wing it, should we talk about our game show idea that we had the other day?

Speaker 1 28:18

what's the game show idea?

Speaker 2 28:20

so this is absolutely nothing to do with zombies. This is our absolutely nothing to do with zombies segment that might get removed. My game show idea comes from my own lived experience as a white person who appears to be female sometimes, which is that I like to sing a lot of rap songs for my dogs that are freestyle and they're terrible. And recently Dan was like you know, you, really actually I think you could do something with this, I think you could record these, and I was like I don't think so. Yeah, and then we were like what if we got rappers, actual rappers, it would be like Nailed it, the TV show where Nicole Byer hosts it and people make cakes really, really badly. That's sort of the vibe I'm going for, where people like me get a little bit of training and support from an actual hip hop artist and then I have to like go on stage and sing my puppy love rap song.

Speaker 1 29:15

Specifically a rap battle.

Speaker 2 29:16

No, no, I don't want to rap, will you? Am I such a rap battle somebody else who is also trying to do a puppy love song?

Speaker 1 29:22

you gotta, you gotta the best puppy love song.

Speaker 2 29:24

Oh no, it's about why my puppy's the best puppy yeah, and how the other person's puppy is shit and then the hip-hop artist wins the money. I don't get anything. Maybe I get like a year's supply of dentistics yeah, that's for the dogs.

Speaker 1 29:42

All the prizes are dentistics, yeah, and other dog related items. A car like a kong chewy, yeah, and a jar of peanut butter. That sounds perfect you're that's, that's the prize. You're the, the, the real winner, your dog it's true.

Speaker 2 29:59

Also, there was one more segment we talked about doing that was not zombie related, which is what we're watching. That's not about zombies, but is about the apocalypse. Yeah, because we watch a lot of things that aren't that don't have any zombies in them no, and primarily honestly, when we take a break from zombie media, we're watching apocalypse things Not always, but a lot of the time.

Speaker 1 30:19

What have we watched recently? I kind of forget the movie Civil War. Civil War was excellent. I kind of want to watch it again. Same I wanted to watch Civil War the second it came like. I saw the trailer online. There's this one scene where there's a guy with bleached hair and pink sunglasses and he is questioning a group of people and they're like we're American, we're just trying to get by, and he's like what kind of American are you? It's scary and it really sets the tone for this apocalyptic future of civil war.

Speaker 2 31:01

Yeah, I think some of it feels a little bit not the larger story that's happening, but the character-driven story of the journalists, and particularly the lead, Kirsten Dunst, and the younger journalists that they are upset about having tag along, but they're tagging along anyways and they remind them of themselves when they were younger. That part is pretty predictable. I knew exactly how it was going to end between those two within 15 minutes of the movie starting. But the broader context of the movie and seeing the United States in a state of civil war was really sobering, because so much of the propaganda we see around the world is that these things only happen elsewhere.

Speaker 1 31:43

Yeah, like if this movie was in Rwanda we'd be like, oh you know, that's just what happens in Rwanda, right? Which is?

Speaker 2 31:52

a messed up thinking process, but yeah. I think that's how we've been trained to see ourselves in the world. We don't do that here.

Speaker 1 31:57

The only time that people in Western society even think about a lot of places that are war-torn is they only think about them in terms of the war. Like if I told you that Afghanistan is a rough place to live, where there's a lot of buildings that are just shelled out from explosions and people there have been running from conflict for years and against the Russian invaders who were trying to take Afghanistan for themselves. It was a really nice place. There's always been fighting there. That's just kind of the nature of Afghanistan, because they have a lot of resources that people want, but it's mountains and it's this rugged land that is almost completely untouched by Western civilization, to the point where, like, if you went into the mountains and you met a goat herd, a herder, um, and you were like I, like your goats, I want to buy them with money, they'd be like what am I going to use the money for?

Speaker 2 33:23

I need the goats yeah, money.

Speaker 1 33:26

What am I going to do? Am I going to walk 50 miles to a town and like buy some m&ms? No, I need the goats. The goats are more valuable than money. Money is useless to me, and that's the kind of world that Afghanistan was.

Speaker 2 33:41

I would like that world for most of us. I don't think money makes a ton of sense. I think having goats and this is a vegan talking, but I genuinely agree that having goats makes a lot more sense. It's a lot more real and in touch with the planet we live in and the place where we live than fictional money that moves around with numbers going up and down. I think we fought the US has fought all of our conflicts since the Civil War, although obviously there's things like the civil rights movement and there's been certainly skirmishes and riots and things like that and the cola wars and the what?

Speaker 2 34:17

and the cola wars?

Speaker 2 34:19

cola wars between pepsi and coca-cola and pib yeah, pib got fucked up in that war but what I'm saying is that we've done all that shit elsewhere, yeah, which has allowed us to not do it so much here, but I think it's a very sobering reminder that it can happen here, and I think the primary message of that movie was basically there were a lot of people that were not directly involved in the Civil War, where they lived in a state where it hadn't really affected their day-to-day yet, or it did, where they were more protective of their town, but they were still living quote-unquote, relatively normally and they were just like well, it's not happening here, so we're just not going to worry about it.

Speaker 1 34:59

There was specifically one town where, when they drove through the town, they were like, did we go back in time? Because everybody was just walking around and going into stores.

Speaker 2 35:15

Places were open for business, yeah, but there were still some dudes with guns making sure you didn't do anything you shouldn't. But my larger point is that I think I think the message of the movie is that you can't just look the other way when things are bad somewhere else, because eventually it comes to your back door. Yeah, and I think that that is true, and I think the united states is having a reckoning, and I don't think we're that far off from having real conflict here. The only thing that makes it difficult is just that the united states is an incredibly bloated and wealthy army. Yeah, so it's hard to have a civilian uprising be very effective in such a militarized country.

Privilege, War, and Civil Unrest

Speaker 1 35:45

Yeah, and I mean this. This movie was kind of like the, the depiction that, like a lot of the right wingers that are begging for civil war in this country, picture it happening where it's like, you know, we have multiple armies and they all have equal amounts of Apache, helicopters and Humvees and we're going doing an actual like ground forces war against each other. But uh, I I think, I think the a future civil war looks a lot more like individual civilians attacking each other more than it's actual physical armies, a lot more like guerrilla warfare, a lot more like, um, opportunistic bombings and shootings, a lot of the things that we already have had.

Speaker 2 36:33

I was going to say it's already happening to some degree, which again is the point of the movie, which is like I think it's worth thinking about the things that are happening around us, that when some of us have the privilege to ignore them, maybe we shouldn't be, maybe we shouldn't be. And I'll wrap it up by saying this that when I saw, saw the wizard bisan, who's a journalist in palestine or in gaza sorry, uh, share a video of what their home looked like before it was bombed that's what made me finally really really cry about what's happening in gaza. It wasn't all of the endless scenes of war, it was the reminder that she had a regular home and a regular life and a very cute cat, that she didn't know where it was anymore, and I think that that says a lot. That's what the movie reminded me of is just like it's really important.

Speaker 2 37:23

All of us are vulnerable to starting to dehumanize folks who are going through those things, because it's very hard to picture ourselves there if we've never been there. And I know you've had your own experience of war dance, so maybe it's a bit different for you, but for me I still fall victim to that like, oh well, it's not happening here and like I don't have to worry about those things, that the reality is is like that that could be our house and that those could be our dogs or we never see them again. Yeah, and it'd be totally out of our control there.

Speaker 1 37:48

Uh, I had my own um encounter like that when I was in afghanistan, because, like you know it's. It's like when you're just on base all the time, it's easy just to think like, oh, this is the little america inside of afghanistan, um, and we belong here. You know, like it's easy to think those things, um, especially when you're young. I just remember feeling like this was always here, this military base has always been here in afghanistan that's weird yeah, um, but I was, I was in a skiff.

Speaker 1 38:21

A skiff is a secret compartmented information facility. It's where you store secret information, um, and you conduct briefings and do military intelligence analysis. It's a safe place for people to discuss very secret things without anybody being able to eavesdrop or record them. And I remember being outside of one where people usually take their smoke breaks, and this one guy came out and you know, I was just kind of like remarking how, you know, it's kind of a nice day. And then, you know, days like this make you think that this place is pretty nice sometimes. And he said, because we were in Kabul city at the time, kabul is the capital of Afghanistan. It's a big city. And he said that years and years ago Kabul was a very beautiful city.

Speaker 1 39:22

And I realized he was from Kabul, afghanistan. I did not realize I was talking to a local Afghani and part of me didn't even realize that it would be possible that an Afghani would have the clearance that I had to be inside of the SCIF. Wow. And I was like now it makes sense. I'm like, yeah, of course, because this is a cooperative environment where they need to conduct intelligence and things like that. So it made sense, but at the time I'm just like whoa. This person existed here and there was a before time and the before time.

Speaker 1 40:01

This was a nice place. That's so sad, yeah, and ever since I had that interaction, I remember just seeing random places in Kabul and just looking at it like walls with barbed wire across the top and stuff and just thinking, yeah, this is where people live. People live here and this is their lives. They're not just here for a little while to fight this war. They're here and they're living and this is their home and there are beautiful things here.

Speaker 2 40:33

Yeah, that's really sobering to listen to. I think it's the height of privilege to be able to joke about the zombie apocalypse and wanting to be in one as much as I'm exhausted from working 12 plus hour days for many weeks now. I'm physically exhausted. I just want to sleep. I haven't been this tired in a long time.

Speaker 2 40:53

I know there's others out there listening that work, that kind of job, like Dan, that do this all the time. I just want to say I don't know how you do it, but I'm physically suffering. But at the end of the day, I have food in my fridge, I have electric working, I have running water, I have all the clothes I could need, I have love and security and I know that I'm able to eat next week and the week after and six months and a year from now. I don't worry about those things and I.

Speaker 2 41:18

It is really sobering to remember when you're watching a movie like that that brings it home literally that really we're very lucky to have what we have and places like gaza are going to take a decade to rebuild and the amount of co2 they put in the air is only accelerating climate change in a really fucked up and horrifying way. And, like the people living there, are not going to have a normal life for a really long time and they're going to have to deal with the scars of this. Generations probably, yeah, generation, I mean, this is definitely. This is a high candidate for generational trauma, for sure. Yeah, and that's not the zombie apocalypse. Obviously, the zombie apocalypse sounds like a fucking cakewalk compared to war.

Speaker 2 41:56

Yeah, if I had to make a choice between surviving one or the other, I would absolutely choose zombies. Zombies are basically people that can run fast sometimes, yeah, in some worlds. In others they can't.

Speaker 1 42:08

They're also easy to predict and if you go inside of a house, typically they can't get to you, yeah, whereas in war you're not safe anywhere. There's very. The one real privilege that we have in Western society that's not in a war-torn country is that we don't know the exhaust, the, the true level of exhaustion that you feel when you are running for your life.

Speaker 2 42:39

Yeah, that's what I was saying, like today, where I'm I feel terrible. If I had to feel this terrible also, you know what? I know that it's sometimes stigmatized for some people. I also have my period right now, so there's like many things happening where I'm like I don't feel good. If I had to also be running for my life, yeah it would, it would be horrible, and then I would also be at a disadvantage because I'm not well right now and like you know, I've, I've had a taste of this because I was in the army, um, during a time of war, uh.

Speaker 1 43:06

so, like I've, I've gotten to taste that exhaustion and that fear and what comes with that. But I was allowed to come back and to get away from all that and, as a result, I will likely be paid by the US government for the rest of my life because of the damage that that small amount did to me.

Speaker 2 43:29

Yeah, and nobody who is a victim of war and didn't participate in the US military, I don't know. I mean, I guess Canada has good veterans benefits too, but I'll just speak again to the civilians out there. They don't get that kind of compensation. How is the United States going to be held accountable for what they've done to Gaza and, frankly, so many other places in the world? They can't even apologize to African the world. They can't even apologize to African-Americans, they can't even apologize to native people Like I. Just they can't even live up to some basic stuff.

Speaker 2 43:59

Like you know, reparations for people here who have been directly oppressed for hundreds of years can't do it. So it's just like and that's why, you know, some part of me is like yeah, you know, the United States is due for some real first consequences and that, of course, affects all of us. I'm not saying I want anybody listening who's a United States person, a Canadian, a UK person to be in harm's way, but I do think that the message of like we need to be paying attention where this is happening elsewhere, and it doesn't just mean in our own country's backyard is really really important, because the more that we pretend that we're fine and we're insulated, we can't be expecting anybody's help when it comes for us if we're not giving a shit about anybody else, and you know I think that uh, I'm going to close this out with a little bit of a spoiler for my book.

Speaker 1 44:51

This might actually come into play more in the second or third book. So I don't know, 27 years from now, when that's out. Is that in my book the zombie apocalypse doesn't happen everywhere in the world. It happens only in North America, the geographically locked areas of north america.

Speaker 2 45:14

Every other country handled their shit so central central america was able to create a border. Now they got messed up. Okay.

Speaker 1 45:22

So the americas, yeah, north again I don't know all the way down to panama, panama canal, okay, um, and so north and as a result, there is a conversation about whether or not anyone should help America, and the major consensus is that we deserve it and that we brought it upon ourselves, and, if anything, we pose an imminent threat to the rest of the world the longer that we are allowed to just exist.

Speaker 2 45:54

That's really fascinating. It reminds me of a thing my grandfather used to say, which is so horrible I almost feel like I just shouldn't say on the podcast, but it's really hard. It's a hard moral dilemma because I still think like obviously we're all humans here. But I will tell you that when I've traveled internationally which I've had the privilege of doing quite a bit, and I'm usually with Americans I get treated a lot better when I say I'm Canadian than the Americans with me.

Speaker 2 46:21

It's a completely different world. When I was in we'll finish after I tell this story when I was in South Africa in 2006, there were pictures of George Bush like posters of George Bush, with, like their throat slash, like all over, and South Africa is a quote, unquote more developed country. I was in the city of Cape Town. It was, honestly, a lot of it indistinguishable from other big cities I've been, so I want to be very clear that I think the stereotype of African cities is that they look very different from ours. No, it was a city with high rises and some really great restaurants and things, and then there was just a lot of art that was essentially like fuck you America, because of the things that we were doing internationally.

Speaker 2 47:01

And even Canadians, like when I introduced my ex-wife to one of my uncles no, he's like a cousin, but he's my mom's age, so I don't know. I think he's like a third cousin, whatever. He was really aggressive towards her. He started basically treating her as if she was representative of all of American policy and started saying all kinds of horrible things to her that I won't repeat. It doesn't help that he's homophobic and transphobic. He has a child that's trans and did not handle that well, so I'm sure there was like an added layer of toxicity there.

Speaker 2 47:35

Yes, he probably would have, but I'm sure he still would have had the like you Americans blah, blah, blah and I would have been like yeah. Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 47:42

I had to remind, like when I'm in Canada.

Speaker 2 47:44

I'm like Americans are people and we're not all the same, people like there's and we're not all the same. And I also have to remind North, like folks in the North or folks out West, that people in the South are all not all the same either. There's a stereotype about Southern people, particularly Southern white people, and, yes, a lot of them are like that, but there's a lot of people that are trying really hard to change things and so it's like. I see both sides is what I'm saying. I see the yeah, just let America rot because of what we have done as a collective whole to places elsewhere. And I see the like it's more nuanced and complex than that. Yeah, there's a lot of good people here. There's a lot of good people who definitely were not part of that problem and trying to fix it. There are a lot of good people who have been oppressed within the borders of the United States and are trying to make the world better for themselves and for others. So I don't know what the right answer is. I just know it's hard. And with that, our next book that we're going to be reading as our feature book and interviewing Lindsay King Miller, is the Z Word. The Z Word. The Z Word.

Speaker 2 48:44

That episode is coming out October 13th, which is also the same weekend as Atlanta Pride. So that was a fun little happy accident. Yeah, because Pride happens in October, because it's hot there. Yeah, augusta, where I live, never got with the program. It was the end of June and everybody wanted to melt into the grass.

Speaker 1 49:03

But Atlanta was just like. We're not doing this, let's do this in.

Speaker 2 49:05

October, when it's also still extremely hot, but not as hot as June. So, anyhow, that's the book we're reading right now. I know some folks are listening who have already finished the whole thing. I'm about 50% done, dan. You've completed it.

Speaker 1 49:18

Yeah, I read it a while ago.

Speaker 2 49:19

Yeah, I'm going to restart from the beginning and you should read it if you like drag queens, if you think Pride is a fun event and imagining zombies there is good and also spicy it definitely has some spice. Yes, I'd say at least three pepper spice. Out of a five pepper spice rating yeah, at least three.

Speaker 2 49:39

I think more. That's why I say at least three. Yeah, very graphic. It's fun though, if you like that sort of thing. It's not like smut, but sexuality is very much a part of it and I appreciate that. Yeah, Because I'm always saying why aren't people having sex in the apocalypse? Why aren't they? I don't know, they're running for their lives, I guess.

Speaker 1 49:58

They're tired, yeah, tired and sweaty, and they're covered in zombie gore.

Speaker 2 50:01

And if you made it this far through this episode, thank you. I will say this, dan is probably the closest thing that you've heard from us. That is a fully unfiltered, just the way we talk with each other, which is kind of nice. So here you go. This is actually like we're very we talk about this stuff a lot here. It's very uplifting home and hopeful.

Speaker 1 50:21

You come in and you're like, oh, these people might be wonderful. And we're like, wouldn't it be great if everyone was dead?

Speaker 2 50:29

That's Dan, to be clear I am the idealist, dan is the nihilist, and together we create balance. Wouldn't you say my love? Yeah, yeah, but I actually do believe in a better world even against all evidence.

Speaker 1 50:40

I also believe in a better world without humans in it again, I gotta repeat myself it's not all humans yeah, but mean it really takes care of the problem.

Speaker 2 50:52

He's selling my grandpa now. I refuse to believe that that's the solution.

Speaker 1 50:55

I think your grandpa would say very specific humans.

Speaker 2 50:58

Yes, and so would I, but not the ones that he would say. And that's all I'm going to say you know I've done a lot of unlearning in my life as a white person, and we're going to finish this up by me restating that this gun is a fuchsia e color and it is not a legit, fully purple color, and I'm gonna post a picture after this comes out and you all can vote on it. It's purple and I will. I will abide by whatever people say joker purple it is not purple.

Speaker 2 51:27

It's fuchsia, which is like towards purple, but it's not a purple.

Speaker 1 51:30

I see, okay, well, thanks everybody for listening. Vote on the color of my gun.

Speaker 2 51:36

Yeah, welcome, it's not real. I feel like we need to keep saying that. I'm even going to zoom in in the picture so you can't quite see that it's a toy gun, because I feel like I don't want to promote that, even though we talk about violence, violence on the podcast all the time. I don't know. Okay, I seriously have a meeting in 16 minutes, so I gotta go.

Speaker 1 51:54

I gotta go pretend to be a worker kid again. Thanks, thanks for listening. Everyone um follow us on instagram and stuff all those things yeah, rate, subscribe.

Speaker 2 51:59

Leave us a review. I really miss uh people's words yeah, give us those reviews yeah um you've got an audible account and you don't have a apple podcast account, you could do do it there too.

Speaker 1 52:10

Oh yeah, we are on Audible.

Speaker 2 52:12

Yeah.

Speaker 1 52:12

Yeah, isn't that wild, but thanks for listening and we'll see you in the next one. Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 2 52:19

The end is nigh.

Speaker 1 52:20

The end is nigh.

Speaker 2 52:23

Bye-bye, bye.