The Least Threatening Zombie Ever

Hello again, from Seattle.

Within the first 48 hours of arriving here, I was clustered under the Space Needle with a couple hundred people with pale, blotchy skin, oozing wounds, incoherent muttering, and really bad hair. And, unlike the last time I found myself in this sort of company, I didn't have to buy a corsage for my prom date.

My new friends and I were all dressed and made-up as zombies, for the Seattle Zombie Walk of '09. Fresh off the plane, I was assured that, like the Hawaiian lei or the Minnesotan hot dish, the zombie march is the traditional greeting for visitors to Seattle.

With the help of a Ben Nye color wheel, some Mehron clown white, and a little prosthetic goo, I made a pretty passable attempt at a zombie whose lower jaw had rotted off. As far as I knew, this was a classic zombie archetype....until I got to the parade. The first compliment I received as a Seattlite was "Dude...really nice. Although, when you think about it, a zombie without a lower jaw is the least threatening zombie ever. It can't even bite you." I countered, "That makes me perfect as an undead ambassador." My new friend adjusted the knife impaled through his forehead, "That's cool...politics aren't really my game. More power to you, zombassador." He casually shrugged and loped ahead in search of brains.

Already, as a zombie, my personal values were coming into question. Am I a demagogue even while feasting on the flesh of the living? Can I simultaneously kiss ass and munch brains? Existentially shaken, I adjusted the fleshy polyethylene tongue glued to my adam's apple and resumed my slow march toward...what? Brains? Clout? Acceptance?

...An hour later, I sat in the 5 Points pub, drinking a Sierra Nevada IPA. Beer--that was my goal. How could I have forgotten?

A new start, a new blog

Among the many gifts I've received from my grandmother (including a burial plot in Germanville), perhaps the best has been: Advice.

In between encouraging me to go skydiving with her and cautioning me against the dangers of Creeping Charlie, she pushed me to maintain a journal. In an attempt to get properly settled after college, I pulled up my roots and bought a one-way ticket to Seattle. The job search is unmitigated tedium, the weather is grey and wet, and my social life is that of a sparrow suddenly thrust into a flock of penguins. "That," she says, "is exactly the sort of thing you should write about."

I don't usually keep a blog, for a few reasons. The first, and most obvious, is internet laziness. It's not that I don't have anything better to do than blog, it's just that, if I don't have anything better, I'll make something up. "You know what...I think I'll go weed the neighbors' garden." The second, more realistic reason is a fear that someday, all this will be used as evidence to put me away.

But, that being said, I'll give it a shot. After all, it's what my grandmother wants, and it came down to this or the skydiving.