Zombie Alert in Georgia

New Orleans has Treme shut down whole city blocks for filming. In Georgia, they shut down whole state highways in metro Atlanta to film their local drama The Walking Dead.

At least it isn't The Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Though if they needed to shut down a highway for scenes, I'm wondering why they didn't use I-16 around Metter or US 441 around Irwinton. There would be far less traffic to divert either place.

But round McDonough? That's just zombnoxious.

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The World's Longest Press Release

Or maybe the world's longest op-ed. Perhaps the world's longest navel-gaze. Any way you cut it, all Newsweek did with this spread was give Michelle Rhee four pages of advertising, and exactly zero journalistic verification of her claims. There are so many flaws and contradictions in what she wrote that I can barely begin to discuss them.

I'll just let you read the article yourselves. Don't worry if you feel sorry for her, or excited about educational reform when you're done reading. Through all my pop-culture conditioning, even I was relating to her at some points. Some. Before I got too far into that, I realized I have a well-developed suspension of disbelief that comes from a life of reading science fiction and horror novels. That was the part of me that was relating to Rhee - the part of my brain that can sketch dragons and unicorns and read zombie fiction all night.

Meanwhile, the reality-recognizing parts of my brain, the part that went through a year of "education reform" in the Recovery School District in New Orleans and the accreditation fight back in Glynn County, Georgia, that part of my brain saw thiw for what it was.

Four pages of fluffy, self-aggrandizing nonsense.

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Zombie Popularity

Professor Kat isn't content to just watch zombie TV, no. She breaks down the cultural appeal from an academic standpoint.

When I was growing up, a lot of post-apocalyptic fiction had to do with what happened when the governments of the world finally nuked each other. Mad Max, War Games, Terminator, Red Dawn.

Fast forward to today. Anybody notice that post-apocalyptic fiction post-Cold War has a lot to do with the failure of systems to contain crises? From zombie fiction like World War Z and the Walking Dead, to macabe fiction like The Road, even to the entire Harry Potter series - disaster is coming and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

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