It's Begining To Look A Lot Like November 4th

Halloween is behind us. The little ones are still in a diabetic coma from all the sugar they managed to loot from their neighbours three days ago, and so it's a perfect time to begin looking to Christmas.

Yes, it's that time of the year again, November. This can only mean that shops have removed all their skeletons and cobwebs and replaced them with elves and fairy lights. I still there is money to be made in reversible decorations for these two holiday seasons. Think about it, on one side is a terrifying skull, rotting and empty eyed; then on November 1st you flip it over to reveal the rosy cheeked face of a man whose life goal is to sneak into the bedrooms of children across the world and leave them gifts. The perfect dichotomy.

Admittedly, certain stores need to start the push this early. If your sole purpose for existing it to sell Christmas decorations, or novelty Santa lawn gnomes, then your window of opportunity is pretty tight. You need to have your product out there for people to use as soon as they're ready to decorate their dwellings in the festive cheer.

But if you're a normal, everyday store, then do you really need to have the fir tree adorned with colourful lights and a star in your window before December 1st, or the last week in November at the earliest? Toy stores sell the same stuff at Christmas as they do the rest of the year, they just stock more around now. We don't need to have Let It Snow or some sickly rendition of Jingle Bells blaring into our ears at this stage.

Yesterday morning when I went to get a banana from Starbucks I was shocked to find their Christmas gift displays up already. In hindsight of course I shouldn't have been surprised at all, but it just reminded me that the most wonderful time of the year is fast approaching. Don't get me wrong, I do love Christmas. I can't wait to buy all the lights, a tree, random, brightly coloured decorations and put them everywhere in our apartment. I just want to enjoy Christmas at, you know, Christmas.

And I feel that Christmas starts on December 1st.

I Like The Way This Soldier Talks

Finally, someone is doing something about this menace to our way of living! General Ryan has some interesting ideas, and I for one will be keeping a close eye on Cork Zombie Watch, especially coming up to Halloween.

Be vigilant out there.

Brrrraaaaaaiiiinnnnssssss

A clichéd beginning, but I was chatting to friend over coffee in town just the other day, when the conversation moved to the subject of zombies. Yeah, my posts never stay clichéd for long.

Talk ranged from The Walking Dead, both the comic and the upcoming series, to the millions of movies, included the role playing game All Flesh Must Be Eaten, as well as the board game Zombies!!!, but tragically missed out on Zombie Fluxx, an omission I am deeply upset by.

Anyway, it got us talking on the subject of Zombie Flash-mobs, such as the one Claire and I were at while visiting Karen in San Fransisco. And very quickly, our little group huddled around a coffee shop table enjoying a breif spell of fine weather decided to run our own one. Here's the plan.

This Halloween night falls rather conveniently on a Saturday, allowing all you grown up kids out there to get all dressed up and go out drinking, without worry of work in the morning. We were thinking that we could turn this years Halloween festival into Corks biggest zombie mob event, and just the start of something special. Hopefully, people will show up to a set location, dressed in standard Halloween affair, but zombiefied!

Being Halloween, even if we only get ten people to turn up, we'll be cool! It's Halloween. We'll just be a big, themed group! But if we get more, it'll be awesome! It'll show that there is enough interest that we might get it done independently. It could be done at some time removed from Halloween. Which is the ultimate goal. Cities in America have zombie walks every six to eight months. It would be awesome if we could get just one run next year during what passes for a summer in this country.

So start spreading the word. Get people interested. Get excited. It doesn't take much work at all to be a zombie. Having seen the mob on show in SF, zombie costumes can range from torn clothes, latex ripped skin, prosthetics and lashings of blood, to simple effects like just some white face paint with a fraction of green mixed in for a very Romero effect. And of course, if you really want to be minimalist, just dress in some old clothes and put a duct tape X across your chest and let the other zombies do all the work! An X marks you as a "willing" victim, and guarantees you'll get attacked and covered in blood.

But facts like that are another post. For now, I'm just getting the word out there, to see who's interested. Anyone?