Who are the real Zombies in this Apocalypse?

A series of gruesome murders have taken place over recent weeks leading people to an odd conclusion.  The main headline grabber comes to us from beautiful Miami Florida where commuters were rudely interrupted during their rides home, finding a naked man eating a hobo on the side of the highway.

We have another case from Baltimore Maryland, where a college student ran out of Hot Pockets and Raman Noodles and had to resort to eating his roommate. 

Meanwhile, up in Canada, a gay porn star/model/internet celebrity, killed his boyfriend, ate some of him and then boxed up the rest and mailed it off to various Canadian Government Agencies. 

Finally in the always lovely state of New Jersey, anther “zombie” was cornered by police.  Instead of allowing them to take him into custody, he did what any normal minded person would do in that situation and sliced himself open and started throwing parts of his guts at the cops. 

Clearly these incidents are gruesome and horrifying and nightmare provoking however, the people who carried them out are, and in a few cases were, as alive as you and I at the time.  Therefore, they aren’t zombies. 

Are they all psychotic?  Sure, more than likely.

Did some, if not all of them, have more drugs in their system then at a Woody Harrelson Family reunion?  Yes they probably did. 

Were these people so mentally ill and deranged to a point where they were unable to control themselves in anyway whatsoever?  Absolutely, I bet they all were.

Were these people zombies?  Absolutely not.  

Want to know why?  Because there is no such thing as zombies.  They are made up.  They are fictitious, Hollywood cash cows and nothing more.  I know that people know this, and I know that they know this, and that I am just raining on their fun little fantasy land parades that they live in.  However, I want to know why I am so personally intrigued. 

I find it to be extraordinarily interesting how a spree of gruesome crimes can happen.  Said crimes are then reported on by the media, and the next thing we know, pop culture has labeled it the “Zombie Apocalypse”.  How does that happen? 

Could it be the growing popularity of zombie related television shows?  Are we all just wired somehow to quote unquote “label” everything that happens?  Maybe it is just so impossible for our brains to properly grasp such a string of horrifying events that we are forced to categorize them as something so unbelievable that we eventually land on calling it “The Zombie Apocalypse”.

Honestly, if I had to take a guess, I would say we are just plain old fashioned bored as a society.  People, for better or worse, love to hate these sorts of stories.  We have been trained to do so over the years, thanks to Hollywood, Fox News, Video Games and other moguls of modern day fiction. 

As revolting as it may be to hear, these types of things happen every single day, throughout all of the corners of this rock that we inhabit as it hypnotically spins us around the sun.  But when they happen in our American backyard, we are so intrigued that our collective, self-aggrandizing consciousness kicks into full gear.  Somehow subconsciously wanting to keep these sorts of things in the news cycles because of how boring our lives are otherwise.  If we label these things, and call them something like “The Zombie Apocalypse”, more naïve people will jump on the idea and soon enough the idea will become marketable for lack of a better term.  And before long, we will be able to guarantee ourselves something interesting to watch for on the nightly news; something to break up the monotony. 

And to me, therein lies a huge problem with us as a species.  We are, like it or not, chomping at the bit to hear about these things, just for our next chance to act shocked at how horrible they are.  Many of our lives are so boring or bad, that in a way, it feels good to hear about people who are A LOT worse off than we are.  And somewhere in the fray of the news cycles, the big questions are never asked. 

Such as; “How in the world does a human get to a point where they resort to these sorts of actions?”  Surely there had to be warning signs prior to someone dismembering their boyfriend and mailing the pieces to the government, no? 

What are we doing wrong?  How can we ensure that these people receive whatever care, counseling, incarceration required to prevent these kinds of things from happening? 

Someone needs to figure this out, because our societal lust for these sorts of things to continue, to me, raises the most red flags.  

We, as a country, could use a real kick in our asses when it comes to our collective moral.  When I can ask people who are much older than me, and who have been through things like Vietnam and World Wars, if they have ever seen things worse for America then they are right now?  And they say “No”; I think it leads to labels like this. 

People want to be able to categorize all the horrible things that happen, along with the impossibility of making a decent living in this country, along with unemployment and unrest in the streets, as something that represents a massive breakdown in our culture, an all encompassing catastrophic event of sorts.  Finally a few horrible murders happen in rapid succession and boredom mixes with frustration which mixes with fear and we call it, “The Zombie Apocalypse”.  In other words, “How can this shit get any worse?”