text:
Zombibliography-Zombie: The Living Dead
Zombie: The Living Dead by Rose London
(New York: Bounty Books, 1976), 112 pp.
Cover art by Robert Ellis
I don't know anything about Rose London. I assume she is a British author of popular works and not a university professor or scholar. Her book, Zombie: The Living Dead, is a popular, pictorial history of the undead in movies. It covers not only American movies but also those from Great Britain, Mexico, Canada, and other countries. The book was originally published in Britain. It's worth noting that, although Ms. London's book covers vampires, mummies, and other undead creatures, it is entitled Zombie: The Living Dead. That indicates to me that zombies were gaining traction in the mid-1970s as a leading monster type. Nevertheless, the author's discussion of zombies doesn't begin until page 76, and about half of that discussion is devoted to science fictional themes, including invasions by aliens bent on controlling the minds and lives of people on Earth. There is, without a doubt, a connection between movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and stories of zombies, but I'm not sure that stories of alien invasion belong with stories of zombies in a book like this one.
The zombie section of Zombies: The Living Dead includes a few movies worth mentioning in any history of zombies. One is Revenge of the Zombies (1943), in which "[a] doctor operating in the swamplands of the Deep South tried to create an army of invincible zombies to help the Nazis." (p. 82) Thus, even early on in the history of zombies in America, storytellers recognized the significance of zombies as representative of mass movements, especially political mass movements. Another is Invisible Invaders (1959), an alien invasion movie in which the dead rise from the grave en masse. Thus, as early as the 1950s, there were scientific undead vs. the supernatural undead. And they moved in masses. Still another is Plague of Zombies, a Hammer film from 1966 in which a strange plague kills off the inhabitants of an English town, only for them to come back as zombies. Although there is a scientific explanation for the zombie-ism in the movie, there is also a supernatural explanation in that the man responsible for the plague has been to Haiti and has learned about voodoo there. Having never seen Plague of Zombies, I can't say how those two things are reconciled. In any case, Plague of Zombies seems to have anticipated Night of the Living Dead and all subsequent stories of zombie hordes infected with disease.
So it looks like the zombie in film evolved over the years from a harmless and helpless slave--a walking deadman lacking any will of his own--into a frightening and dangerous monster. That is to be expected, as there aren't very many dramatic possibilities represented by a figure who lives, yet lacks all human personality and attributes, motivation or agency. There was also an evolution from the zombie made by magic to one made by science. And there was of course an evolution from solitary zombie slaves or small groups of slaves to out-of-control hordes or masses. I wonder if there will ever again be a zombie movie based on the original idea of the zombie as one of the harmless (and pitiable) undead. I have a feeling that moviegoers, having forgotten the slave origins of zombies, would complain, "That's not a zombie." That's how far we have come, I think. It seems obvious to me, though, that there was not a first of anything when it comes to zombies in film other than that there was a first zombie movie, which was, of course, White Zombie, from 1932. Instead, there was an evolution of zombies. I'll have more to write on that in an entry I will call "The Island Theory of Zombiation."
Labels: The Color Green, Zombies
Zombibliography-Horror!
Horror! by Drake Douglas
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966), 309 pp.
From the dust jacket of Horror!:
Drake Douglas is the pseudonym of a gentleman who has been deeply involved with horror throughout his life--and prefers to remain anonymous.
I did a search on the Internet and found that "Drake Douglas" is a pseudonym of Werner Zimmerman, but I didn't find any further information on Mr. Zimmerman except that he has written several books:
Horror! (non-fiction, 1969 [sic])
Undertow (novel, 1984)
Creature (novel, 1985)
Death Song (novel, 1987) (with Stephen Kent)
Horrors! (non-fiction, 1989)
Horror! is a popular study rather than a scholarly one. If it were scholarly, this book might be a candidate for the first such study of zombies, having been published in 1966. Nineteen sixty-six was also before the advent of the horde of scientific zombies as in Night of the Living Dead (1968), so the zombies described in the book are the old-fashioned supernatural kind, which seem to be of less interest to our contemporary academia. Anyway, zombies in Horror! are covered in a chapter called "The Walking Dead." (I think there's a TV show by that same name.) In it, the author makes a very strong connection between zombies and black slavery in the New World. "According to voodoo belief," he writes, "the zombie is a dead man restored to life as a powerful, emotionless, mindless automaton, an empty shell of a man, complete slave to the will of his master." (p. 187) The author adds: "[T]he zombie poses no great threat to others. He is a monster created by the needs of economy rather than for purposes of evil." (p. 189) Again, there is a strong connection to slavery, but in continuing his discussion, Mr. Zimmerman sounds like he is describing a far more modern creature, the industrial robot:
He [the zombie] is an ideal slave, requiring no attention and little food or sleep. He can be made to work eighteen hours a day at a steady, remorseless pace which never varies from one hour to the next. He need not be paid, he explicitly follows all orders. . . . The zombie is the cheapest source of labor ever discovered. (p. 189)
Maybe that's why zombies are on the same curve as robots (and human beings) in the graph illustrating the uncanny valley, about which I wrote not long ago.
Werner Zimmerman comes to the same realization that I and others have come to, namely, that to become a zombie is a unique fear for the slave or the descendants of slaves, specifically, I would add, for Haitians:
It is not difficult to understand the native horror of the zombie, particularly in the earlier years of slavery. Death was, for them, the only release from a life of brutality and inhumane treatment; they greeted death with open arms. It meant the end of the beatings, of the backbreaking labor, of the heartbreak and misery which were the lot of the slave. Zombieism, on the other hand, was merely another form of slavery which reached beyond death itself. It was the constant fear of the natives that they would be torn from their graves where, at last, they had found rest, to return to a form of slavery even more horrible than that they had known during life. (p. 189)
Mr. Zimmerman also indicts "[t]he white man" for his support of zombie-ism.
He [the white man] was interested in a cheap, reliable labor force and, since only these primitives were involved, did not overly concern himself about its source. The plantation owner became rich, the voodoo priest became powerful, and the black slave had but one more misery to be added to the heavy load he carried. (pp. 189-190)
Again, the critical theorist might see here an indictment of capitalism, or, at the very least, evidence of his idée fixe, the historical "class struggle," but that would be a misreading of the facts, I think. Although Mr. Zimmerman doesn't mention Haiti in this passage, zombie-ism seems to have been limited to that island nation. If there were white plantation owners and black slaves, then the discussion is of colonial times, that is, Haiti before it attained its independence in 1803. That leaves two possible groups of white plantation owners: 1) Those living under the French crown, a feudal, statist, and essentially non-capitalist or anti-capitalist regime; or 2) Those living under the governments that followed the overthrow of the monarchy, which were leftist rather than monarchist or reactionary but were nonetheless statist. By extension, then, the fear of becoming a zombie and of being held as a zombie-slave is a fear of enslavement under either a feudal and statist regime or a leftist and statist regime. Where in this is the capitalist?
Disregarding all of that, the fear of zombie-ism has passed from a fear among black people of being made into zombies and being held in slavery as zombie-slaves--the zombie himself is passive and harmless in this case--to a fear among all of us of being attacked and killed by zombies that are extremely aggressive and dangerous. For white people without a history of being held as slaves, there is no fear of being returned to slavery without end.
Second, the fear of zombie-ism has passed from the realm of the supernatural--which no modern person fears anymore--into the realm of the scientific, which every modern person respects. Third, the fear of zombie-ism has gone from one as on a small scale in a distant and obscure part of the world to one as on a mass scale in one's own modern and advanced society. It is, in short, a fear of hordes of scientific zombies arriving at your door.
Although he described the zombie in 1966 as "a fairly new arrival to the world of monsters" and one "not surrounded by the wealth of legend which has built itself around the more widely known monsters," Werner Zimmerman seems to have predicted something more for this representative of the walking dead. The zombie is, he wrote, "a frightening powerhouse as capable as the vampire of striking fear into the hearts of those who come across him." (p. 194) You could argue that the zombie has actually replaced the vampire in that role.
Labels: Zombies
Weird Tales Books-Black Medicine by Arthur J. Burks
Black Medicine by Arthur J. Burks was published in 1966 by Arkham House of Sauk City, Wisconsin, in an edition of 2,000 copies. Arkham House books are typically rare, costly, and prized by readers and fans of weird fiction. I was lucky enough to find recently a reasonably priced copy of Black Medicine. I finished reading it on March 11, 2017, and can report on its contents. I had hoped to find zombies in the stories of Arthur J. Burks. I'll cut to the chase and let you know there aren't any.
Burks was born in Washington State and served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War I. He also served in occupied Hispaniola or Santo Domingo, probably in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Burks served in other places as well, possibly in the Pacific. These locales show up in the stories in Black Medicine, of which there are eleven. The first, "Strange Tales of Santo Domingo," is actually in six parts, so it might be more accurate to say there are sixteen stories in the book.
The sixteen stories in Black Medicine fall into three groups, plus one story that stands alone. One group of stories is set in the Dominican Republic. They include "Strange Tales of Santo Domingo" in its six parts and "Three Coffins." Another group is set in neighboring Haiti. These include "Voodoo," "Luisma's Return," "Thus Spake the Prophetess," and "Black Medicine." The third is a looser group of unrelated stories set in different places: a time-travel fantasy called "When the Graves Were Opened"; a dream-fantasy called "Vale of the Corbies"; an oceangoing ghost story, "Bells of Oceana"; and a ghost story set in Burks' own Washington State, "The Ghosts of Steamboat Coulee." I consider "Guatemozin the Visitant" to stand alone for different reasons, first because of its length (72 pages in Black Medicine, or of novelette length); second, because it's the only story in the book not to have appeared in Weird Tales; third, for its setting in Mexico; and fourth for its unusual themes and unusual power.
One very appealing characteristic of Burks' writing is its even-toned and effortless authenticity. As a military man serving on board ship and in exotic locales, he had a rare familiarity with his subjects and settings. He didn't have to do research on what his characters do and where they live and work, for he did those things and lived and worked in those places himself. It's refreshing to read genre fiction of such authenticity and verisimilitude. Burks was given to pulpish and purplish prose at times, but those aspects of his writing are easily outweighed, I think, by his skill at describing real places and real situations.
Arthur J. Burks was one of the first authors--if not the first--to have a story on Voodoo in Weird Tales. His first two stories in "The Unique Magazine," published under the pseudonym Estil Critchie, were "Thus Spake the Prophetess," from November 1924, and "Voodoo," from December 1924. "Thus Spake the Prophetess" is set in Haiti, but there is no explicit mention of Voodoo or any of its practices, figures, or spirits. "Voodoo" is of course a different story (no pun intended). It, too, is set in Haiti and involves the search for a Voodoo priest by an American serviceman. The serviceman, Rodney Davis, infiltrates a Voodoo ceremony, where he sees a Maman Loi, "the priestess of the serpent," a Papa Loi, her male counterpart, and the sacrifice of a "goat without horns," that is, a human being, in this case an adolescent girl. Davis returns to his commanding officer to report, laconically, that justice has been served.
Other tales of Voodoo followed, the longest and most detailed of which is "Black Medicine," the title story of this collection and the cover story for the August 1925 issue of Weird Tales. I had speculated before that the larger figure in that cover illustration might be a zombie. As it turns out, he isn't, for there are no zombies in Black Medicine. As it turns out, the figure is a man, Chal David, "chief Papa Loi of Bois Tombé." The woman in front of him is a Maman Loi, "high priestess of the cult of voodoo." In the background of the cover illustration are the "followers of the Great Green Serpent." If I understand Voodoo (also called Vaudoux and Voudon) correctly, the "Great Green Serpent" of Haiti might also be "Li Grand Zombi" of Louisiana. Nevertheless, zombies appear to be absent from the fiction of Arthur J. Burks, leaving William B. Seabrook as still the father of zombies in America.
One more thing: There are many good and enjoyable stories in Black Medicine, but one of my favorites and one of the most powerful, I think, is "Guatemozin the Visitant," a story of a revenant from the Aztec past who, when his burial place is disturbed, comes back to wreak a terrible vengeance on the Mexico City of 1931. I am reminded of The Plague by Albert Camus, a far more significant work to be sure, but I would not take anything away from Burks except for, again, his occasional pulpish and purplish prose.
Black Medicine by Arthur J. Burks
(Sauk City, WI: Arkham House, 1966), 308 pp.
"Strange Tales of Santo Domingo"
"A Broken Lamp-Chimney" (Weird Tales, Feb. 1925)
"Desert of the Dead" (Weird Tales, Mar. 1925)
"Daylight Shadows" (Weird Tales, Apr. 1925)
"The Sorrowful Sisterhood" (Weird Tales, May 1925)
"The Phantom Chibo" (Weird Tales, June 1925)
"Faces" (Weird Tales, Apr. 1927)
"Three Coffins" (Weird Tales, May 1928)
"When the Graves Were Opened" (Weird Tales, Dec. 1925; reprinted Sept. 1937)
"Vale of the Corbies" (Weird Tales, Nov. 1925)
"Voodoo" as by Estil Critchie (Weird Tales, Dec. 1924)
"Luisma's Return" (Weird Tales, Jan. 1925)
"Thus Spake the Prophetess" as by Estil Critchie (Weird Tales, Nov. 1924)
"Black Medicine" (Weird Tales, Aug. 1925)
"Bells of Oceana" (Weird Tales, Dec. 1927; reprinted Apr. 1934)
"The Ghosts of Steamboat Coulee" (Weird Tales, May 1926)
"Guatemozin the Visitant" (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, Nov. 1931; reprinted in Magazine of Horror, Sept. 1969)
Black Medicine by Arthur J. Burks (1966), with cover art by Lee Brown Coye.
Labels: Arthur J. Burks, Lee Brown Coye, Weird Tales Books, Zombies
Weird Tales Books-Stories of the Walking Dead-Part Three
More from Stories of the Walking Dead, edited by Peter Haining (1986):
"Salt Is Not for Slaves" (1931)
by G.W. Hutter, pseudonym of Garnett Weston (1894-1948), presumably American
"Salt Is Not for Slaves" was one of the first zombie stories, written by the scenarist of White Zombie, a movie not yet released when the story was published. This is one of my favorite stories in Tales of the Walking Dead. It pushes the origin of zombies back to the Haitian Revolution and makes the strongest association of any story here between slavery under French colonialists and zombies. I don't think anyone can say whether that association is accurate or not, as the origins of the zombie in Haiti appear to be lost. In any case, Weston's story is set in the 1920s or '30s in Haiti, but it is mostly about the historical past. It is a tale of zombie-slaves who don't know they're zombies until they taste salt. With that, they return to their graves. It's interesting that in "Salt Is Not for Slaves," the zombies speak and live like normal human beings. Also, the (presumably) white narrator simply reports on his experience and recounts what he hears from the old Haitian woman. Other than receiving a bad scare, he is never under threat.
"The House in the Magnolias" (1932)
by August Derleth (1909-1961) American
You could pretty well count on August Derleth's being on top of developments in weird fiction. His story "The House in the Magnolias" was published before White Zombie was released. It must have been one of the first zombie stories in America, and it incorporates elements of the Haitian zombie story, including the eating of salt. It is set, however, in Louisiana, home of a different kind of zombi(e), the Voodoo serpent god, Li Grand Zombi. In other words, Derleth transferred the Haitian zombie to the American mainland, a key development in the history of zombies in America. The narrator is an artist in the household of a woman named Rosamunda Marsina and her unseen Haitian aunt. Also in the household and in the fields around the house are the walking dead. The threat is from the unseen Aunt Abby, who turns out to be a zombie-master. The people threatened--the narrator and his now lover, Miss Marsina--are white (or she is a very light-skinned mulatta).
"White Zombie" (1933)
by Vivian Meik (1894-1955) British
Vivian Meik saw the movie White Zombie and liked the title. He recycled that title for his story of 1933. "White Zombie" is set in Africa, but there is a connection to Haiti: a missionary claims to have seen a strange mist only in those two places, a mist that haunts and menaces the protagonist. As it turns out, the mist is associated with Voodoo and with zombies under the control of a white woman who has essentially gone native. (The association of mists with Voodoo and zombi(e)s is a continuing theme in fiction.) In short, the zombie-master is a white woman who threatens white people. The black zombies themselves are far less of a threat.
"The Hollow Man" (1934)
by Thomas Burke (1886-1945) British
"The Hollow Man" is a story of the walking dead, though not explicitly of a zombie. The undead man is white, but he has been made by black men--the Leopard Men--in Africa to be used as their slave. Remembering the man who murdered him, the undead man escapes from slavery and sets off to find that man. His quest takes him all the way to England. There is a variation here: the Leopard Men take the place of the zombie-maker, but their victim is white. He in turn torments the man who murdered him, who is also white. In short, "The Hollow Man" doesn't quite follow the conventions of the zombie story, but then it isn't explicitly a zombie story.
"American Zombie" (ca. 1936)
by Dr. Gordon Leigh Burley (1900-1973) British
"American Zombie" is a brief tale inside of a tale. It is told to a journalist by a M. Champney, a Frenchman who has traveled to America and tells of seeing the creature of the title. She is a white woman who lies on a bed behind a locked door in a building on Lennox Avenue in Harlem. She is one of the living dead, made by Voodoo magic and subject to the commands of her master. She is referred to as a guède, a zombie, but also the French word for the plant woad. In Voodoo, the Guédé, also spelled Gede or Ghede, are the loa, or spirits, of the dead, specifically the loa of sexuality, fertility, debauchery, and so on. To continue, in "American Zombie," the zombie as one of the walking dead is associated with the conventions of Voodooism. Though brief, Dr. Burley's story is rich with zombie lore. It even mentions The Magic Island by William B. Seabrook. In "American Zombie" the white victim is a zombie, while the zombie master is black.
"While Zombies Walked" (1939)
by Thorp McCluskey (1906-1975) American
Like "The House in the Magnolias," Thorp McCluskey's story for Weird Tales is set in the American Southland. The protagonist is a Northerner who has gone looking for his girlfriend, who is a resident of a plantation house owned by her great-uncle. Sharing the house is a monstrous white minister, a Rev. Warren Barnes. As it turns out, Rev. Barnes is a Voodoo master, a manipulator of Voodoo dolls, and a maker and master of zombies. He has learned his craft from a black Voodoo-man. Upon Barnes' death the zombies return to their graves, and the way is clear for the protagonist and his girlfriend to be together again. Here, then, is another variation, for the zombie-maker and zombie-master is white, as are the objects of his torment. The story--cruel and less than likable--has a weird-menace atmosphere fitting for its time.
"I Walked with a Zombie" (1942)
by Inez Wallace (1888-1966) American
"I Walked with a Zombie" was written by Cleveland journalist Inez Wallace for The American Weekly, the Sunday magazine of the Hearst chain of newspapers. It's similar to "Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields" by William B. Seabrook and includes most of the conventions of the zombie story, including the eating of salt. There are three short accounts of zombie-ism in Inez Wallace's article. The first is of a white woman who is made into a zombie by a black Haitian woman and is returned to her grave by the white woman's husband. The second is of a group of zombie-slaves held by a black headman named Ti Michel and of the revenge upon that man taken by the still-living. The third is of a black woman in Port-au-Prince who has zombie-slaves dance for her and whom she manipulates with mud figures like Voodoo dolls. (See "Ballet Nègre" below.) By the way, the 1942 film I Walked with a Zombie was inspired by and named after Inez Wallace's article.
"The Zombie of Alto Parana" (1950)
by Stanley Moss (1921-1965) British
"The Zombie of Alto Parana" is not at all a zombie story. The word appears only in the title. I assume it to refer to one of the two main characters in the story, both of whom live on the edge of the world in a backwater jungle of Argentina. One of the two, the German Emil, evidently cannot return to the outside world. His life is like a death-in-life, and that leads me to think he is the zombie of the title. The other, a British man named Clift, is in a kind of exile, too, but he can return and means to return home. Emil has other ideas for him. This is perhaps the most psychologically complex and character-driven of all the stories in Stories of the Walking Dead. It belongs here, I think, only by a stretching of the definition of "the walking dead."
"Ballet Nègre" (1964)
by Charles Birkin (1907-1985) British
"Ballet Nègre" is the most recently published story in this collection. Like "The Hollow Man," it is set in England. The zombie-master is a black Haitian who runs a dance troupe. The zombies are also black. The victim is a white reporter investigating the dance troupe. Before dying, he manages to feed the zombies some meat. The story ends with an image of them making their way westward across the English countryside, in the direction of their Haitian graves.
So in the conventional zombie story, there are three (or four) main figures: 1) The zombie-maker/zombie-master; 2) The zombies he or she has created; and 3) The tormented, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes a couple. Any or all of these figures can be white. It doesn't seem to matter much whether the zombie-maker/zombie-master--the tormenter--is white or black. The zombies of course are among his or her victims--they are obviously among the tormented--but if they are black, they are also depersonalized to a large extent. They are merely bit players in the zombie drama (as seems to be the case in the contemporary zombie story such as The Walking Dead). It seems to be much more significant when a white person is made into a zombie. A white zombie is at the very least a tragedy. It may also be an affront or threat against white people. Here's the kicker, though: it seems in almost every case in the conventional zombie story that the tormented person or persons is white. That may have been the only way that the zombie story could make its way into the white culture of the 1920s through the 1950s or '60s, for a black hero, a black heroine, or the two together would not have appeared in movies, short stories, or novels made or written for white people. (1) That makes me think: There was black cinema in those days--was there ever a black zombie movie? Or was Ben, the black man in Night of the Living Dead (1968), the first black hero in a zombie story? And look what happened to him. Was he killed because he represented an implicit threat to white people, especially in the era of black marches and civil rights? According to Wikipedia, that fount of all knowledge, Duane Jones was cast in the movie because he had the best audition of all the actors considered for the part. So if the screenplay was already pretty well written by the time George Romero was holding auditions, then the hero--even if he had been white--was fated to be shot. That would not have been a racially charged episode in the movie. But because the part was played by a black man, I can't help but see a racial element, however subtle it might be, especially with the sounds of police radios and barking police dogs as the backdrop for the final sequence.
A final note: There are no zombie apocalypse stories in Stories of the Walking Dead. I wonder now what was the first such story in print.
(1) The exception to all of this is "Salt Is Not for Slaves," in which the main actors in a story told by a white man are in fact black.
Duane Jones (1937-1988) in Night of the Living Dead. Was he the first black hero in a zombie story?
Labels: Weird Tales Books, Zombies
Weird Tales Books-Stories of the Walking Dead-Part Two
Stories of the Walking Dead (1986)
Edited by Peter Haining
Stories and Authors
(In chronological order by date of first publication)
"The Country of the Comers-Back" (ca. 1888-1890, 1890)
by Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) Irish-American
"The Country of the Comers-Back" was originally a part of Lafcadio Hearn's series of travelogues on the West Indies, written for Harper's New Monthly Magazine and published in 1888-1890. This series was collected and reprinted in Two Years in the French West Indies in 1890 and reprinted again in later years. In that book, Hearn's story was called "La Guiablesse." Peter Haining changed the title to the more evocative (and pertinent) "The Country of the Comers-Back." We should note that Martinique, on which the story is set, is called "the Island of Revenants" or "the Island of the Comers-Back" because people who visit there are supposed to find it so pleasant that they want to return. Although Martinique is also called "the Island of Ghosts," the sobriquet used as the title here has nothing to do with zombies, as when Hearn's story was written, zombis were still spirits and not the undead that we know today.
There are actually two stories in "The Country of the Comers-Back." The first is Hearn's investigation into the meaning of zombi. He asks Adou, the daughter of his landlady, What is a zombi? (Not the first nor the last time that question is asked in the annals of zombiedom. I'm still not sure we have gotten the picture.) Her answers are vague. A zombi is something that makes disorder in the night . . . zombis are everywhere . . . a zombi is a woman fourteen feet high who comes into your locked house at night . . . it is a five-foot tall dog that also comes into your house at night . . . a great fire on the road at night, one that continually recedes as you approach: that is made by a zombi . . . "a horse with only three legs that passes you: that is a zombi." One thing Adou makes clear: a zombi is not "the spectre of a dead person" or "one who comes back." The second story in "The Country of the Comers-Back" is of a Guiablesse, or devil-woman, who lures a man to his death. My friend points out the similarity of the word to diablesse, a female devil. In Caribbean folklore, there is another devil-woman called La Diablesse, probably the same kind of creature.
"Jumbee" (1926)
by Henry S. Whitehead (1882-1932) American
"Jumbee" was written and published before the advent of the Seabrook zombie. It is set in the Virgin Islands and is a tale told by a native to a visitor from the mainland United States. The visitor, Mr. Lee, has read about Martinique and Guadeloupe and has encountered the word Zombi before. (He must have read the travelogues of Lafcadio Hearn, who is mentioned in the story.) He knows about Jumbees, too, for he has read The History of Stewart McCann (evidently a fictitious book, à la Ech-Pi-El). Like Zombis, Jumbees are spirits. Mr. Da Silva, the teller of the tale, describes the Jumbees he has seen: a boy, a girl, and a "shriveled old woman," three together, hanging in the air next to the road. "The Hanging Jumbees have no feet," Mr. Da Silva explains. "Their legs stop at the ankles. They have abnormally long, thin African legs. They are always black, you know. Their feet--if they have them--are always hidden in a kind of mist that lies along the ground . . . . they do not twirl about. But they do--always--face the oncomer . . . ." (First set of ellipses added.) (This description of floating and footlessness reminds me of the Flatwoods Monster and the Mothman.) The tale continues without any further mention of Zombis, for in Rev. Whitehead's tale, Jumbees have taken the place of Zombis as the spirits of the night.
"Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields" (1928, 1929)
by William B. Seabrook (1884-1945) American
"Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields" is originally from William B. Seabrook's syndicated newspaper features of 1928. Like Lafcadio Hearn more than a generation before, Seabrook traveled to the Caribbean to report on local culture, folklore, etc. His articles were collected in The Magic Island, published in January 1929 to immediate acclaim and great success. It is because of Seabrook that we have zombies in America today. You might say that he carried the zombie virus from its isolated tropical fastness into our large, bustling country. After alternating periods of incubation, infection, remission, and reinfection, the virus is now among us and everyone has become infected.
Like Hearn's article, "Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields" is actually two tales told to Seabrook and relayed to us through his writing. The first tale is the paradigm for zombie stories that came after it and that almost fill this anthology: men and women raised from their graves by a zombie-maker, held as slaves without mind or will, and returned to their graves only when they taste salt or eat meat. In short, they are the walking dead that we know now, except that they are not cannibalistic or threatening in any way.
There is a statement in "Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields" that stands out for me. Lamercie, a black female overseer of zombie-slaves, tells Seabrook, "Z'affrai' neg pas z'affrai' blanc'." The affairs of blacks are not the affairs of whites. (1) Zombie-ism is a thing among black Haitians, she is saying. It is not something with which white people should concern themselves. I think that's an important thing to know for two reasons. First, among the zombies encountered in the story are several slaves under Ti Joseph, "an old black headman," who has them work for him at Hasco, the Haitian-American Sugar Company. Leftists might see this as an example of capitalist and imperialist exploitation of zombie-slaves. In actuality, the zombie-slaves are being exploited by a black headman, and it is his affair. Hasco simply employs the people who are presented to them by Ti Joseph, a kind of recruiter or subcontractor. Yes, Hasco is there in the island nation of Haiti and is either providing work or providing the opportunity for workers to be exploited, however you might look at it. But the culpability lies solely with Ti Joseph and similar native slave-masters and overseers. They are the ones who have made the zombie-slaves and/or are exploiting the zombie-slaves. Hasco had nothing to with with either action, for zombie-ism during the American occupation of Haiti was still "z'affrai' neg" and not "z'affrai blanc'." The distinction is an important one. Nevertheless, it may be lost on leftists in academia today, despite their vast erudition.
Second, and more importantly, I think, zombie-ism was presumably practiced in Haiti for generations, if not centuries, before Americans arrived there in the 1910s. It was, again, an affair for black people, and no one outside the island seems to have known about it until William Seabrook sent out his dispatches to the American reading public. (2) Zombies became popular only after they were transferred from their originating black culture into the larger white culture. Remember, the first zombie movie was called White Zombie. Call it cultural appropriation if you like (3), but zombies came of interest to white people only after that transfer, and especially when zombies, zombie-makers, zombie-masters, and Voodoo in general were seen as threats to white people. For as long as zombies were "z'affrai' neg," there was no threat, at least to white people. We see the same thing today where black men are killed or black women go missing and almost nothing is said about it in the mainstream media.
It seems to me that this is the story in general of black culture in its transfer to white culture. For example, when jazz, blues, and rock-and-roll were black forms, they were of little or no interest to white people. As they began being transferred into white culture, they were seen by many people as being negative (neg-ative?) or even threatening. Once they were pretty fully whitified--jazz in the 1920s (under Paul Whiteman, no less), rock-and-roll in the 1950s, and blues in the 1960s--they became less negative and more acceptable in the white mainstream. It reached a point where some black practitioners of these black forms were seen among white people as somehow threatening or hostile. Miles Davis comes to mind as an example. In any case, today, zombies are mostly white and are very popular among white people. White people in the real world see themselves as zombie-slaves or see other people as zombie-cannibals or zombie-deadmen. The black past of zombies seems to have been forgotten. The paradigm of the threat of zombie-ism--perhaps especially of black zombie-ism--to white people began after the publication of The Magic Island and continued for decades in popular fiction, as we'll see in part three of this series.
The second tale in "Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields," by the way, is a Poe-esque tale of a woman who goes to a dinner on the occasion of her wedding anniversary and is greeted with a macabre scene laid out by her husband.
(1) In that, Lamercie echoes the words of Lafcadio Hearn's Guiablesse, who tells a man who asks where she lives, "Zaffrai cabritt pa zaffrai lapin." The affairs of the goat are not the affairs of the rabbit. In other words, none of your business.
(2) As we have seen, British author Hesketh Prichard went to Haiti a generation before Seabrook, and although he wrote about Voodoo and the Mamaloi, he seems not to have known about zombies.
(3) I won't because I don't believe in cultural appropriation. People have been borrowing things from other people's culture for as long as there have been people. If you don't like cultural appropriation, you shouldn't put up a Christmas tree at your house next Yuletide season unless you're of German descent. And quit speaking English if you're not of Anglo-Saxon origin.
A zombie? Maybe. A photograph presumably taken by William B. Seabrook in Haiti, circa 1928. From the El Paso Herald, March 31, 1928, p. 8.
Weird Tales Books-Stories of the Walking Dead-Part One
If you want to build a zombographical library, you might start with a hardbound collection from 1986 called Stories of the Walking Dead. Edited by Peter Haining, it includes many seminal stories and articles on zombies. Almost all are of the Seabrook-type zombie, the version that has come down to us as one of the walking corporeal dead. (As you'll remember, the original zombi is a spirit.) First the contents, then, beginning in part two, the stories and their authors. Two of these stories first appeared in Weird Tales.
Art by Nigel Hills.
Stories of the Walking Dead edited by Peter Haining (London, UK: Severn House Publishers, 1986) 224 pp.; also called Zombie! Stories of the Walking Dead
Introduction by Peter Haining
"Dead Men Working in the Cane Fields" by W.B. Seabrook (Originally in newspaper syndication, Mar. 1928; subsequently in The Magic Island, 1929)
"Salt Is Not for Slaves" by G.W. Hutter (Ghost Stories, Aug. 1931)
"The Country of the Comers-Back" by Lafcadio Hearn (Harper's New Monthly Magazine, ca. 1888-1890; reprinted as "La Guiablesse" in Two Years in the French West Indies, 1890)
"Jumbee" by Henry S. Whitehead (Weird Tales, Sept. 1926; reprinted Feb. 1938)
"White Zombie" by Vivian Meik (Devil's Drums by Vivian Meik, 1933)
"I Walked with a Zombie" by Inez Wallace (The American Weekly, May 3, 1942)
"American Zombie" by Dr. Gordon Leigh Bromley (From an unknown magazine, possibly Occult Review, ca. 1936?)
"While Zombies Walked" by Thorp McCluskey (Weird Tales, Sept. 1939)
"The House in the Magnolias" by August Derleth (Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror, June 1932)
"The Zombie of Alto Parana" by W. Stanley Moss (London Mystery #6, 1950; reprinted in A Book of Strange Stories, 1954)
"Ballet Nègre" by Charles Birkin (The Smell of Evil, 1964)
"The Hollow Man" by Thomas Burke (The Evening Standard Book of Strange Stories, 1934)
The Mamaloi in the 1920s
The Mamaloi is supposedly a Voodoo priestess, sorceress, or queen. British author Hesketh Prichard (1876-1922) first described her in Where Black Rules White: A Journey Across and About Hayti (1900). According to Jared Poley in his book Decolonization in Germany: Weimar Narratives of Colonial Loss and Foreign Occupation (2007), German author Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943) used the Mamaloi in at least six of his works, from "Die Mamaloi," published in 1907, to "Ich trinke Schlangenbrühe und finde--ein süßes Wort," published in 1927. (Poley, p. 99) At least one American author also wrote about the Mamaloi. His name was Gerald Chittenden (1882-1962), and his story "The Victim of His Vision," published in Scribner's Magazine in May 1921, was selected for inclusion in Prize Stories of 1921 (1922) as a winner of an O. Henry Award. The story opens:
"THERE'S no doubt about it," said the hardware drummer with the pock-pitted cheeks. He seemed glad that there was no doubt--smacked his lips over it and went on. "Obeah--that's black magic; and voodoo--that's snake-worship. The island is rotten with 'em--rotten with 'em."
He looked sidelong over his empty glass at the Reverend Arthur Simpson. Many human things were foreign to the clergyman: he was uneasy about being in the Arequipa's smoke-room at all, for instance, and especially uneasy about sitting there with the drummer.
"But--human sacrifice!" he protested. "You spoke of human sacrifice."
"And cannibalism. La chèvre sans comes--the goat without horns--that means an unblemished child less than three years old. It's frequently done. They string it up by its heels, cut its throat, and drink the blood. Then they eat it. Regular ceremony--the mamaloi officiates."
"Who officiates?"
"The mamaloi—the priestess."
Chittenden's story, Hesketh Prichard's original, Ewers' variations, and the general ideas of infanticide, human sacrifice, and cannibalism among practitioners of Voodoo might seem sensationalistic. Is there any truth in them? There is actually, as in the gruesome case of "the torso in the Thames" from 2001. In any event, Chittenden's protagonist, Reverend Arthur Simpson, is a Protestant and looks at the Roman Catholicism practiced in Haiti with distaste. The sacrifice of children by the Mamaloi and her coreligionists would seem to comport with his seeming anti-Catholic views. I searched for the words zombi and zombie in the text of "The Victim of His Vision." Once again, I didn't find any occurrence of either word. I also did a Google search for "Hanns Heinz Ewers" and "zombi" and came up empty. It looks like the stories, respectively, of zombies and of the Mamaloi, though perhaps from a common origin, diverged at some point, leaving only the inducing of a death-like sleep as a common element. Still no zombies before 1928.
The Mamaloi and Hanns Heinz Ewers
The word Mamaloi is new to me. I searched for it on the Internet and came up with a Doobie Brothers song. Here is a passage:
Gypsy, she say I got the fever
I don't know whether to believe her
But when the wind blow from the sea
My soul start to fly away
She give me charm that will protect me
Necklace with stone from far across the sea
But island magic much too strong
It won't let me go this time
The song is about Jamaica. The group hails from California, I guess, but had, in the early 1970s, a Southern/Cajun/Texan kind of vibe. At least that's how I remember them. ("Mamaloi" is from the album Toulouse Street, named for a street in New Orleans. The album also has a song called "Snake Man.") (1) Anyway, if you keep searching, you'll find out that Mamaloi is a name given to a Voodoo sorceress, priestess, or queen. Her male counterpart is Papaloi. Among their powers are the ability "to produce a sleep which is death's twin brother." That's according to Hesketh Prichard in his book Where Black Rules White: A Journey Across and About Hayti (1900). The Mamaloi and Papaloi can also raise the afflicted person--usually a child--from this state of near death only so that he can be used in a human sacrifice.
The raised dead of the Mamaloi sounds a lot like zombie-ism. It seems to me that following the Mamaloi lead might produce some results. But first, before I even started searching, I thought of the musical piece Ma mère l'Oye, or the Mother Goose Suite, by Maurice Ravel (1910). L'oye or l'oie is French for goose. I don't think that's the right track, though. It seems more likely that Mamaloi is a combination of Mama and loi or law. In other words, the Mamaloi is a person of some authority, power, or prestige.
In searching for Mamaloi in literature, I found that, strangely enough, there is a connection to the German author Hanns Heinz Ewers (1871-1943), a fantasist and seeming decadent who lived a strange and interesting life. According to the book Decolonization in Germany: Weimar Narratives of Colonial Loss and Foreign Occupation by Jared Poley (Peter Lang, 2007), Ewers "was deeply fascinated by what he called the Mamaloi." (p. 99) Ewers wrote about the Mamaloi in at least six works, beginning with "Die Mamaloi," from 1907. The subject of "Die Mamaloi" is a Haitian woman, Adelaide, "who kills her son in a voodoo ritual." (p. 99) In that, Ewers seems certain to have read Where Black Rules White.
According to Jared Poley, Ewers' fascination with the Mamaloi was because of her practice of infanticide. (2) Her use of Voodoo magic to afflict a person with near-death seems less the point, and Ewers' use of the word zombie or zombi is uncertain. I found the full text of "Die Mamaloi" in Spanish and searched it for zombie and zombi. No dice. So, again, a seeming miss in the use of those words before William B. Seabrook of 1928. I would add that Ewers is an interesting figure for students and fans of weird fiction. I would like to find a full-length biography and study of his works. I wonder, too, about discovering his works in English.
(1) Notice in "Mamaloi" the phrase "island magic" with its echoes of The Magic Island by William B. Seabrook (1929).
(2) As a moral transgression and an expression of self-loathing, infanticide is likely a sign of decadence in a culture or society. In fact, it would seem a key sign in diagnosing decadence, as it is demonstrates a lack of vigor, confidence, and hope in the individual and his or her society. Jared Poley ties it to "the Baal and Labartu creation myths from the fertile crescent." (p. 99) I am reminded of sacrifices made by Canaanites to Moloch and of the current worldwide practice of abortion, which--whatever its moral implications--is helping to bring about the dissolution of decadent societies. Cannibalism in the modern world, too, is a decadent practice: William Seabrook is supposed to have partaken of human flesh at least once. Aleister Crowley is also supposed to have been a cannibal. In 2001, Armin Meiwes, significantly a German, advertised for someone who would voluntarily be eaten by him. Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes, significantly a German, answered the ad and ended up in pieces in Meiwes' refrigerator. In 2012, Floridian Rudy Eugene, of Haitian descent, tried to eat the face of a homeless man in Miami. For a time, some people were alarmed that Eugene's actions were the beginnings of a zombie outbreak. Instead, Eugene was probably using a synthetic drug, although his use of marijuana might be enough to explain his psychosis. That brings us to zombies, which are of course, cannibalistic and an ultimate expression of decadence, although wanting to be eaten by another person is probably even more ultimate.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Hanns Heinz Ewers in an English edition of 1927, published by John Day, and illustrated by Mahlon Blaine (1894-1969).
Alraune by Ewers, translated by S. Guy Endore (1900-1970) of The Werewolf of Paris (1933) fame. Published by John Day in 1929, this edition was also illustrated by Mahlon Blaine.
Vampire, the last in Ewers' trilogy of Frank Braun, translated by Fritz Sallagar and published by John Day in 1934. Vampires are associated with zombies as among the undead, moreover, as among the cannibalistic undead.
Blood, a collection of three stories from Heron Press (1930) and including "Mamaloi" from 1907. The pictures were by the children's book illustrator Edgar Parin d'Aulaire (1898-1986).
Although there are many, many more images I might include here on Hanns Heinz Ewers, I have decided to stop with this one, the cover for L'araignée et autres contes fantastiques, a French-language edition with an unknown date. "L'araignée" was originally "Die Spinne," from 1908.
Labels: Mahlon Blaine, Zombies
Hesketh Prichard and the Raised Dead
I began these several series on zombies on January 31, 2017, with an entry called "Zombies Are Here!" (Click here to read that entry.) Not long ago, John Linwood Grant of the blog Grey Dog Tales left a comment on that initial entry regarding the origins of zombies in popular culture. Mr. Grant quoted from a work by Hesketh Prichard from around 1899:
[The Mamaloi] can produce a sleep which is death's twin brother. For instance, a child marked for the Vaudoux sacrifice is given a certain drug, shivers and in some hours sinks into a stillness beyond the stillness of sleep. It is buried in due course, and later, by the orders of the Papalois, is dug up and brought to consciousness.
The very strong implication is that this is the same process used to make a zombie. If that's the case, then the origin of the zombie as the walking dead might be pushed back a generation. Here is a lengthier and more inclusive quote from the original source:
There is another operation to which the Papalois--or more often the Mamalois--turn their power. They can produce a sleep which is death's twin brother. For instance, a child marked for the Vaudoux sacrifice is given a certain drug, shivers and in some hours sinks into a stillness beyond sleep. It is buried in due course, and later, by the orders of the Papalois, is dug up and brought to consciousness; of what occurs then I have written in another place. It is ghoulish and horrible, but beyond all question human sacrifice is offered up to a considerable extent in the Black Republic at the present time.
The quote is from Where Black Rules White: A Journey Across and About Hayti by Hesketh Prichard, published in 1900 by Archibald Constable and Company of Westminster, United Kingdom, page 93.
Hesketh Prichard (1876-1922) was Major Hesketh Vernon Prichard, an adventurer, military man, and author who is supposed to have created the first psychic detective or occult detective in literature. In 1899, he was sent to Haiti by Pearson's Magazine. According to Wikipedia: "No white man was believed to have crossed the island since 1803, and his trip provided the first written description of some of the secret practices of 'vaudoux' (voodoo)." Consciously or not, William B. Seabrook followed in Prichard's path in his trip to Haiti in 1928.
I did a search for the words zombi and zombie in Where Black Rules White and came up empty. In his book, Prichard alluded to "what occurs" after the drugged child is exhumed and revived, events about which he wrote "in another place." Well, I did a search for the word sacrifice in Where Black Rules White, too, and didn't find anything certain. I'm not sure where that "other place" is. In any case, there are differences between Prichard's and Seabrook's accounts of zombie-making. Although a kind of sorcery is used in both, the purpose is different: In Prichard, the raised dead is used as a human sacrifice in a Vaudoux ritual. In Seabrook, the raised dead--explicitly called a zombie--is used as a slave-laborer. He is raised to go on living rather than to be sacrificed.
I had hoped to find in Prichard the use of the word zombi or zombie, as I think the concept predates Seabrook, but the facts in the case of Hesketh Prichard are informative, for if no white person crossed Haiti in the period 1803 to 1899, then accounts of the zombie are unlikely to have made their way into white culture until at least 1900 when his book was published. And if didn't happen then, it would have had to wait until a subsequent account of life in the interior of Haiti was published. That leaves the period 1900 to 1928 as the only possibility unless: a) Zombies as the walking dead were elsewhere in Caribbean or black culture; or b) Zombies appeared in accounts written by black Haitians in the period 1803 to 1928. It doesn't look like zombies as the walking dead were anywhere else in Caribbean or black culture--remember Lafcadio Hearn's inquiries to Adou. That leaves a question: Was there a Haitian literature before 1928 in which tales of the zombie could have appeared?
Two drawings for the series "True Ghost Stories" in Pearson's Magazine, 1898 to 1899, illustrating the Flaxman Low series by Hesketh Prichard and his mother, Kate Prichard. The pair used the pseudonyms E. & H. Heron. The artist was an Australian, Benjamin Edwin Minns (1863-1937).
Thanks to John Linwood Grant of the blog Grey Dog Tales.
Labels: Occult Detectives, Zombies
"All You Zombies--"
So the scientific zombies of today are animated by and in thrall to a pathogen, a living thing that cannot be detected without the aid of instrumentation. What other unseen, undetectable, or unmeasurable forces might drive the behavior of a zombie or the conduct of a human being? Radioactivity might do it, as in the story of the Incredible Hulk. Parasites might do it, too, as in cattle infected with turning sickness. Genes are held to account by some people for much if not all of human conduct, or what they would call human behavior. Very often what is called "society" or "the system" catches the blame when things go wrong in the world. To that point, isn't "society" or "the system" also undetectable? If you think that it is, please point to "society." Draw a line around it and describe it. Try to measure its effects on the individual. What instruments will you use? What will be your units of measure? How will you test your hypotheses? How will you control for variables? Where is your control group? How will your procedure yield results that are either falsifiable or repeatable? Do you have answers yet? Have you found and measured "society" yet?
The points are these: 1) All of these forces--pathogens, radioactivity, parasites, genes, and "society" or "the system"--are undetectable without instrumentation, or, as with "society," by instrumentation, and all are basically material, physical, or biological in nature. 2) All remove responsibility and accountability for the actions of the individual from the individual and place them on an outside and uncontrollable force. (1) 3) We have resorted to these forces because we're squeamish about naming others that might better explain human conduct. One I can think of is evil.
So, zombies, despite all their atrocities, must not be evil because of one of three things: 1) They are not human; 2) Their actions are justifiable; or 3) There is no such thing as evil. But if we want to make zombies representative of real people, how do we go about that exactly? Well, either: 1) Zombies represent human beings but are not responsible for their behavior, being as they are victims of external forces; or 2) Zombies represent the evil people who really exist in the world. In the first category--the non-culpable zombies--are included all of the victims of "society": the slave, the colonial laborer, the illegal alien, the exploited industrial worker, the person born without privilege, the outsider, the downtrodden, the deprived, the forgotten, in short, "the people." Zombies of this type are excused from what they do. In the second category--the evil zombies--are all of the victimizers of "the people": the slave-master, the colonialist, the capitalist exploiter, the imperialist, the fat-cat one-percenter, the fascist, and so on. These zombies must be destroyed. The long and short of it is that all sides of the argument use zombies for their own purposes, and their arguments--despite all of the scholarly titles of their papers, the scholarly forms their ideas take, and the scholarly venues in which they are published--come down to a lot of name-calling. We're all like a bunch of children on the playground or in the street:
"You're a zombie!" cries one side.
"No, you're a zombie!" answers the other.
And so it has gone since at least 2006 when the first overtly political scholarly paper on zombies that I know of was published.
There isn't much in the way of zombie scholarship, such as it is, from the conservative side. After all, academia, especially in the liberal arts, leans hard to the left. (You might say they have turning sickness and turn only in one direction, in a narrowing rather than a widening gyre.) But there are still living conservative commentators who use zombies. Here is a long passage from a recent essay called "The Spiritual Deadness of the Left" by Judah Friedman, from the website of The American Spectator, February 6, 2017:
There is no logic. There are no facts. You can say blue, and they will hear white. One plus one equals cat. Calling the left mentally ill is truly a disservice to those who are mentally ill. At least with mental illness there's a reason for the madness and a hope for a cure. There is no hope for the left. They are suffering from a deep-rooted spiritual sickness, one for which, I'm afraid, there is no cure. [. . .] The problem with spiritual disease is the fact that it can spread very quickly. Sadly, more and more are getting infected.
The protesters, the media, the celebrities, and the leaders are the "Walking Dead." How soulless and lifeless can one be, calling for a military coup against a President (Sarah Silverman)? Or, comparing the President to the Taliban (Whoopi)? Anything and everything comes out of Nancy Pelosi's non-moving mouth. Are you serious, encouraging protesters to be more violent (Judd Apatow)? [. . .]
Plain and simple, their goals are to bite and infect all those who come into contact with them. It is they who have unfriended. It is they who have labeled and ostracized others. It is they who have called for your prosecution, if you question their science. It is they who have shunned and mocked those who don't conform. It is they, who will not hire or fire, if they find out you are a Yuden (Trump Supporter). (2)
In zombies, it seems, we have found a word and a symbol to mean whatever we want them to mean. They're the Swiss Army knife of monsters. They have become the F-word of ideas, i.e., the word that can be used as every part of speech and then some. Whatever intellectual, moral, scholarly, or creative problem you've got, zombies are the solution.
If you go to the website of the Internet Speculative Fiction Database and do a title search for the word zombie, you will get back a list of short stories, poems, books, and magazines with titles containing that word. One of the most prominent and often reprinted is "All You Zombies--" by Robert A. Heinlein from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, from March 1959. The story isn't what you might think: there are no zombies in it. It is instead a time-travel story and one of Heinlein's patented solipsisms. It may be, in fact, the most solipsistic and inverted story ever written. (I won't give anything away--you'll have to read it yourself.) But as with so many things, Heinlein was ahead of his time. He seems to have foreseen that we would all someday tend to look at everyone outside ourselves as mindless zombies, perhaps all of them as having meaningless and contemptible lives. The title is in quotation marks for a reason: it is a quote from the story and is directed by the protagonist at everyone.
I have written a lot about zombies over the last several weeks and there is more to come. The irony is that I don't even like zombies very much, and the reason I don't like them is that they are everywhere. To me, they represent conformity and a lack of imagination on the part of the artist and writer. In my work, I strive to be original, imaginative, creative, and especially non-conforming. (I have to admit to being contrary, too. I am, after all, Irish.) I look for new things, new ideas, and new ways of thinking about, writing about, and depicting these things and ideas. Zombies aren't it (in general). Anyway, if you look at Tyll Zybura's zombibliography from a few days ago, you will see listed title after title and idea after idea that seem worn out and wrung dry. The idea of the zombie is a zombie itself: it's not just dead but past dead. It's a rapidly decaying mess, yet it won't lie down in its grave. It just keeps shambling on, especially in the minds of leftist academics. And though academics may be among the least imaginative of people (artists and writers are pretty bad, too) everyone seems to have uses for zombies, and everyone continues to rely on them. Zombies are used not only in art, literature, and film but also in journalism, political commentary, folklore, critical theory, philosophy, epidemiology, biology, robotics, and on and on. They have become all things to all people. One of the reasons I have written these series on zombies is to show that there is still the possibility of writing something original about them. (At least I hope I have written something original.) But there is so much that is not original, too, and none of it shows any signs of expiring anytime soon. So how much longer will zombies be with us?
(1) Even genes are considered to be uncontrollable. There are, after all, phrases like "genetically programmed" and "hardwired" to describe human behavior that simply can't be changed because of its genetic origins. The language echoes that used to describe computers and robots. So do computers, robots, biologically programmed zombies, and genetically programmed humans exist all on a continuum or on the same curve, as in the second zombograph from the other day? Are they all simply variations of each other?
(2) "Juden" refers to Mr. Friedman's point (and the source of his outrage) that the left has used--and trivialized--the Holocaust, its perpetrators, and its imagery to describe people who support our current president. The leftist's use of zombies is far more trivial, but it is put to the same use, namely, to malign those who oppose them or disagree with them.
Labels: Robert A. Heinlein, Zombies
Weird Tales Books-Stories of the Walking Dead-Part...
The Zombi Did It!


text:
Batman/Superman Calendar Comics Written by Greg Pak
2013.09.25 – "Batman/Superman #3.1: Doomsday"
The Doomsday Villains Month book that I wrote and Brett Booth drew hits stores this Wednesday! Check out the lettered preview here and ask your local comics shop to hold a copy for you!
Comments Off on 2013.09.25 – "Batman/Superman #3.1: Doomsday"
Code Monkey Save World Comics Written by Greg Pak
One more try – let me know how this banner's working for ya!
Still working on that banner for my Artists Alley table at the New York Comic Con. Let me know how this strikes your fancy!
(Previous versions here and here.)
Another version of my NYCC banner – please let me know what you think!
Hey, smart people. Here's another whack at the banner I'm making for my Artists Alley table at the New York Comic Con. Actual physical version will be 24 inches wide, 84 inches tall.
I've tweaked from the previous version to move the main characters higher up on the banner (since the bottom half of the banner will be partly obscured by the table and me) and to remove text and basically make it less busy.
Please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions!
Comments Off on Another version of my NYCC banner – please let me know what you think!
Code Monkey Save World Comics Written by Greg Pak Question Time
Working on my Artists Alley banner for the NYCC – please let me know what you think!
Hey, smart people. I'm working on a 24″ x 84″ upright banner to put behind my table in the Artists Alley at this year's New York Comic-Con. And I could use your feedback! Here's the work-in-progress. Imagine it in living color behind a bearded dude sitting at a table, and let me know what you think!
Comments Off on Working on my Artists Alley banner for the NYCC – please let me know what you think!
Got non-spoiler-request questions? I'll try to answer!
Fighting a cold and about to turn in. But if you have non-spoiler-request questions, I'll try to answer.
As usual, I'll just ask everyone to please not pitch projects or stories – I can't read or respond to those!
Also, life is short, so rudeness, nastiness or personal attacks against anyone automatically get deleted.
Thanks a ton, and fire away!
Comics Written by Greg Pak FilmHelp: Screenwriting Question Time
Building characters
The great comics writer Gail Simone emailed me and a number of other writers yesterday asking if we had one pointer about building characters for a workshop she was about run in Norway. Here's what I sent her:
I try hard, particularly when introducing a character for the first time, to find that one, small, telling action that defines the character for me. Sometimes it's big and showy, like the Hulk tearing open his own starship in rage at the beginning of "Planet Hulk." Sometimes it's small, like Bruce Wayne just sitting there, quietly watching and waiting while Clark Kent yells at some kids who are bullying another kid in a playground at the beginning of "Batman/Superman." But in some way that initial action encapsulates the big emotional journey the character's going to be going on during the course of the story. From that very first moment, the character does something that defines him or her and indicates the conflicts and struggles that he or she will face as a result. Once I figure out this moment, I usually have a pretty good grasp on what I'm doing with a character. If I don't really nail this moment, then I might be in trouble — I might not have done all the work I need to do to really figure out who this character is, what he or she is trying to do, and what he or she is willing to do to get there.
When I reread that this morning, I found myself nodding and committing to work harder to follow my own advice.
This is why your questions about the process of writing are so interesting and helpful to me — they force me to think about what I do and get better at it.
So thanks, Gail — and thanks, everyone who asks these kinds of questions!
Calendar Comics Written by Greg Pak Eternal Warrior
2013.09.11 – "Eternal Warrior" #1 signing with Greg Pak at Forbidden Planet NYC
The first issue of my new "Eternal Warrior" series for Valiant Comics hits stores this Wednesday, and I'll be doing a signing in New York City starting at 6:30 pm at Forbidden Planet, 832 Broadway!
Here's the official solicitation for the issue:
Across ten millennia and a thousand battlefields, Gilad Anni-Padda has traversed the darkest, most mysterious corners of history. But the horror and bloodshed of constant warfare has finally taken its toll on the man myth calls the Eternal Warrior…and he has abdicated his duties as the Fist and the Steel of Earth for a quiet life of seclusion. But when a blood vendetta from the distant past suddenly reappears in the modern day, he must decide if he will return to the ways of war…for the child who betrayed him thousands of years ago…
And here are a few reviews and interviews:
Broken Frontier interview
AM New York interview
Comic Book Bin review
Den of Geek review
Stash My Comics review
Comments Off on 2013.09.11 – "Eternal Warrior" #1 signing with Greg Pak at Forbidden Planet NYC
Code Monkey Save World Comics Written by Greg Pak Los Robos
Recommend a title font for "Los Robos"?
Hey, friends. I'm working on a quick cover for the 10 page "Los Robos" story that I'm about to deliver as a digital bonus to "Code Monkey Save World" backers. And I could use your advice regarding a font for the title! See the cover above. And if you have any ideas for an appropriate font, please let me know!
Comics Written by Greg Pak Red Skull
"Red Skull Incarnate" on sale TODAY ONLY for 99¢ an issue at Comixology!
"Red Skull Incarnate," a comic book miniseries written by yours truly with art by Mirko Colak, is on sale digitally at Comixology for just 99¢ an issue, today only!
"Red Skull Incarnate" tells the origin story of Marvel's most evil villain, following an orphan as he struggles to survive and dominate during the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis. The book's gorgeous and disturbing covers were drawn by David Aja. Colors are by Matt Wilson and letters by Clayton Cowles. Alejandro Arbona edited.
"Red Skull Incarnate is a thorough psychological portrait that savagely avoids cliche. Pak never makes the easy choices in his storytelling, and each major turning point is delivered in unexpected ways. The ending, which everybody knows is coming, is still surprising, fulfilling, and even more ominous than foreknowledge prepares us for, and the characterization is on another level entirely. Watching Johann transform from an orphan boy into a powerful sociopath is seriously engaging, and Pak performs these feats without making excuses for Johann, and without making him unsympathetic. It might be Pak's most skillful work to date."
— John Parker, ComicsAlliance
Comments Off on "Red Skull Incarnate" on sale TODAY ONLY for 99¢ an issue at Comixology!
First page of "Code Monkey Save World"!
"Code Monkey Save World" #1 is done! Written by yours truly based on the songs of Jonathan Coulton, drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa, colored by Jessica Kholinne, and lettered by Simon Bowland.
And here's page one for your viewing pleasure!
Openings are always a bit of a bear. You want to introduce your character and the world in that extra special way that just makes it shine. I originally started the script right in the office, with Code Monkey dealing with his boring manager Rob.
But I felt in my gut that we were missing an opportunity, that there was a better way to let us really get under our hero's skin. So I got on the phone with Jonathan and we talked it through. I'd had a thought of opening with Code Monkey at home, waking up, getting coffee, going to work. And I think Jonathan independently made the same suggestion. It occurred to me that we could show a happier, more optimistic Code Monkey in a graduation picture on his bedstand, which would be a nice way to subtly get a little backstory in there. But we still needed that special something that would encapsulate the terrible drag that is his day-to-day existence. And Jonathan laughed and said he had this goofy idea of Code Monkey in a coffee shop getting his cup and seeing that someone just wrote "Monkey" on it. I couldn't stop laughing — it was just perfect.
"Code Monkey Save World" #1 will be available to Kickstarter backers in a few weeks, and will go on sale via Comixology to the general public a month after that.
Comments Off on First page of "Code Monkey Save World"!

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


An anti-electronic crime court in Islamabad has decided to indict PPP leader Faisal Raza Abidi on February 18 in a defamation case.
The court has sent Abidi copies of the case and the indictment will be read out to him on February 18.
Judge Tahir Mehmood gave this verdict in a case involving defamatory remarks made by Abidi during an interview against former chief justice Saqib Nisar.
He was released from jail on December 22 after being taken into custody on October 10, 2018.


When one discovers the historical animosity and wars against Muslims by one group, then, by what definition can the two be defined Muslims at the same time?
As Ramadan comes to end, Muslims start preparing for the month of Shawwāl. The month of Shawwāl is marked by the festival of Eid, known as Eid Al-Fitr.
Every economy has limited and scarce resources at its disposal. The economic prosperity then depends on how these resources are utilized in an optimum way.
First established in 2005, the Hira Welfare Association takes silent credit for a huge chunk of relief efforts in Bangalore's slums.


Call Us 7 Days per Week!
No job is too small! We would like to help you with whatever air conditioning, heating or indoor air quality issue you may have.
Complete installation of new heating and / or air system in homes without. Includes: Furnace, coil, air conditioner, gas, electrical, ducting, registers, thermostat, attic access and all accessories to complete installation.
Custom Home and New Construction Installation. No home is too small or too large. We have installed systems for pool houses and for homes as large as 30,000 sqft.
Ducting repair and replacement. We can also arrange for Asbestos Abatement.
Reconfiguring ducting for room remodels such as a kitchen remodel.
We can correct problems with air flow… Some rooms too cold while others too warm.
Exhaust systems including oven / hood vent, dryer vent, bath fans, and attic exhaust systems.
Heat pump and air handler repair and replacement.
Mini Splits, Thru the Wall Heat Pumps and Air Conditioners, Window (One Room Units).
Installation of indoor air quality products such as Media filters, HEPA filters, Electronic Air Cleaners, Ultraviolet lights, Humidifiers and Deodorizing filters.
We offer installation of split system heating and air conditioning for light commercial applications.
Packaged gas / electric and packaged heat pump systems.
Maintenance contracts (Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-annually, Annually).
Exhaust systems and Make up air systems.
Did you know Seaside is an exclusive HVAC service provider to True Value Hardware stores in our geographic area? Great for us, but even better for you!
We have also arranged special financing for customers, including up to 18 months with no interest! Contact us for details! Of course, Seaside also accepts other major forms of payment.
Call the office nearest you!
(949) 496-3639 or Email Here!
Copyright © 2011-2015 Seaside Air Enterprises, Inc. | Website Development by Location Marketing, Inc.


text:
Cover Me - The Eddie Hinton Songbook
A cult hero among those who know and love their Muscle Shoals music, Eddie was a fixture of the Shoals recording scene in the mid-late 60s. As well as being a prolific and immediately recognisable session guitarist, and a great singer who sadly recorded far too infrequently, Eddie regularly wrote fine songs with a peer group that at various times included Donnie Fritts and Dan Penn.
Cover Me features a comprehensive selection of Eddie's best-known copyrights, many of which are now regarded as classics of 60s southern soul. Not all of Eddie's songs are as well-known as his biggest hit, the much-recorded Breakfast In Bed, but there are several others here that could and should have been just as commercially successful. Artists would always be glad to record whatever Eddie submitted for their consideration. You only have to look at Cover Me's cast list, which includes Bobby Womack, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, Mink Deville, Cher and Lulu to name but a few, to see the calibre of talent Eddie's copyrights attracted. This collection brings together songs from all periods of Eddie's career. It's sure to enhance the stellar reputation of one of Muscle Shoals' favourite sons and it will be a welcome addition to anyone's collection of 'Ace Songwriter Series' packages.
Compilations of the Year - 2018
Piano Foreplay, title
Gilbert O'Sullivan , artist
Lake Michigan Blues 1934-1941, title
Various Artists , artist
400 Miles From L.A. 1955-56, title
Lee Hazlewood , artist
Lowdown Memphis Harmonica Jam 1950-1955, title
Life Goes On EP, title
Beak> , artist
Free, title
Iggy Pop , artist
The Daisy Age - Bob Stanley, title
Various , artist
Nippon Girls 2: Japanese Pop, Beat, Rock 'N' Roll 1965-1970, title


Seminar paper from the yr 2009 within the topic English Language and Literature experiences - Literature, grade: 2,0, collage of Würzburg, language: English, summary: In Kazuo Ishiguro´s The is still of the Day the 1st individual narrator Stevens, a butler at the verge of retirement, undertakes a trip to satisfy – for what's most probably the final time of their lives – his former coworker and love curiosity leave out Kenton. while, he attempts to come back to phrases together with his prior by means of reexamining his thoughts of his lifestyles at Darlington corridor, the alternatives he made and the values he had. all through his account it turns into more and more seen that Stevens´s narration can't be depended on thoroughly. His reviews on, and interpretation of, earlier occasions in his lifestyles and his portrayal of himself and others in his story reveal him as an unreliable narrator. notwithstanding, his makes an attempt to misinform himself and others are most likely the main attention-grabbing and telltale element of the narrative. in any case, "the use of an unreliable narrator attracts consciousness to a character´s psychology." ironically, the narrator finds so much approximately himself and his lifestyles whilst he's attempting to imprecise the truth.
During this provocative essay, David Adams Richards brings jointly his rules approximately writing -- how nice works of literature are created, the writer's crucial place as an intruder, and the problems writers event within the pursuit of private fact. the hunt for fact consistently comes with a cost, says Richards, however it additionally ends up in freedom for writers and their characters, and occasionally leads to nice works of literature.
Seminar paper from the yr 2006 within the topic English Language and Literature reviews - Literature, grade: 1,3, collage of Erfurt (Philosophische Fakultät), path: the increase of English Journalism within the Early 18th Century, four entries within the bibliography, language: English, summary: I) the 1st 1/2 the 18th centuryThe very important essay by means of John Locke Essay bearing on human realizing (1690) made a very excessive influence within the 18th century.
Ranging over depression-era politics, the disasters of the League of countries, well known journalism and the Modernist tradition exemplified by means of such writers as James Joyce and T. S. Eliot, this can be a complete exploration of the historic contexts of Djuna Barnes's masterpiece, Nightwood. In Djuna Barnes's Nightwood: 'The international' and the Politics of Peace, Bonnie Roos reads Barnes's novel opposed to the backdrop of Herbert Bayard Swope's well known long island newspaper the realm to illustrate the ways that the radical wrestles with such contemporaneous concerns because the nice melancholy and its political fallout, the disasters of the League of countries and the cave in of peace among the 2 international Wars.
From the instant the 1st English-speaking explorers and settlers arrived at the North American continent, many have defined its quite a few destinations and environments as empty. certainly, a lot of yankee nationwide heritage and tradition is sure up with the concept elements of the panorama are empty and hence open for colonization, payment, fiscal development, declare staking, taming, civilizing, cultivating, and the exploitation of assets.
Additional info for "A great butler": the unreliable narrator in Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day"


Jack and Parson are in Gobwin Knob's War Room. Jack is at the table where enemy and ally pieces are laid, projecting dragons and other shapes over a city. Parson is sitting on a couch, holding his Eyebook in his lap with a hand on his forehead. The book is projecting a 3D Hamstard.
This page was last edited on 18 October 2014, at 13:52.


text:
The Best Tools For Local Twitter Search – Find Tweets From a Specific Geographic Location
Finding local Twitter users in your city or location can be very useful at times, you can connect with them to get valuable information. It's also a great social networking move to build relationships with like minded people who are close to your geographical location.
One of the advantage of strong networking in Twitter is the speed with which you receive information. If you have good contacts and friends in your city, you can ask questions and get information more quickly. Another aspect is the authenticity of information, after all a human mouth can be a lifesaver when Google fails.
Here are some really useful web tools which lets you find Twitter users from a specific location, know what they are doing and connect with them:
Advanced Twitter Search
The Advanced Twitter search is still one of the best ways to find Twitter users in any city or geographical location. Just type in the name of the city, state or country and Twitter search will show you the recent tweets coming from that location.
The neat thing about Advanced Twitter search is that you can customize the results and find Tweets that contain a specific keyword or hashtag. You can also define the time period of the tweets to be filtered, this is useful when you want to know the tweets that are coming from a specific city within a defined time interval.
For example: If you are looking for "Chinese restaurants" near Kolkata and want to know what Twitter users from Kolkata are saying about the word "restaurants", perform this search and the results will be shown as under:
Find Tweetups in a city: The advanced Twitter search can also be used to find tweetups in a city. Search for the word "tweetup", mention the name of the city and you are done. See example
There are many more parameters which you can customize – this includes defining the distance of the location, excluding or including specific words or phrases (this reduces spammy tweets), tweets from a particular profile, tweets containing links and more. The results are based on the profile bio's of twitter users and thus it's highly accurate.
LocalTweeps – Find Local Tweets
Localtweeps in another service which uses a hashtag to list Twitter users from a city. You can add your Twitter profile to the Localtweeps website by registering your city's name and zip code. When you use the hashtag "#lt", your tweet is made searchable in the Localtweeps directory.
Hence if you have anything important to share with other twitter users living in the same city, simply use #lt hashtag and wait for the reactions to flood in. I found the service very engaging, because you can easily follow twitter users from a specific city and join the conversation, ask questions and so on.
The site also has a long list of Top twitter users from Top cities, this feature may be used to know the trends and popular events of a specific geographic location.
Desktop App to Gather Location Based Tweets
Need a desktop application to keep an eye on location based Tweets? Enter Twitterlocal – a unique Twitter client built using Adobe AIR which helps you to track location based tweets from your desktop. All you have to do is enter the location and the radius you wish to track, the application will create a real time lifestream of tweets from the specific location.
Newer tweets are shown as they appear, you can click through a link or Twitter profile and start the conversation.
Nearby Tweets
This one is my favorite, because Nearby Tweets automatically determines which city you are from and then loads the recent tweets of users from the same city. You can use the map to change your location to any other part of the world, add your own keywords and perform a fresh search to know the recent updates about a particular subject.
The search interface is simple and clutter free and the results are shown really fast. Highly recommended.
Find Local Twitter Trends With Mapmash
Mapmash is another neat service which can be used to know the local twitter trends of any city. The idea is very simple yet unique – the app displays the currently popular twitter topics and hashtags that are revolving around a particular city. You can browse the world map in the Mapmash website and hover over a city to find the active topics and discussions. Clicking a hashtag loads the recent tweets in the sidebar.
More tips:
1. Twitter tools that save you time
2. Tools to Bulk unfollow Twitter followers
#Featured#How to#Internet#Twitter#Web Tools


Hello and welcome to my blog! I'm so excited to be joining this blog hop, celebrating the Pretty Pink Posh November release!
If you're following along the blog hop, you should have arrived here from the fabulous Joni Andaya. I'll list all of today's blog hop participants below, if you want to start at the beginning.
My card today features the fabulous Layered Tree dies. I teamed them with the previously released Cuddly Cats set, for a cute Christmas scene.
I die cut the four tree pieces and the trunk of the Layered Tree die set from white card. I then used my copic markers to add colour to the tree. I used YG61, YG63, YG67, and G28 for the foliage. Some liquid glue helped to adhere the tree together.
I had some images from Cuddly Cats already stamped and coloured, so I decided to use these for my card. To add a festive look, I paper pieced some Christmas patterned paper to add to the box and mouse. The cat looks so cute peeking out from the Christmas present!
Next, I worked on the background. On a piece of white card, cut to the same size as my card base, I die cut a circle window. I used a larger circle die to die cut some white glitter paper, and I adhered this to my card base to show through the window. On the top piece of card, I heat embossed, in gold, a greeting from the Penguin Pals stamp set. This set is part of the November release.
I adhered the panel onto my card base, and tucked the tree just inside the circle at the bottom. I used some more liquid glue to adhere the tree, with some foam tape near the top to add a little dimension. The cats and mouse were added to the card with foam tape too.
The Layered Tree die set includes some baubles, star and bow dies, so you can decorate the tree. I die cut these from pink and gold glitter paper and adhered them to the tree. I used foam tape for the baubles and star, and liquid glue for the bows.
I thought the tree needed a little sparkle, so I added some Pink Blush jewels. These look like little tree lights, especially when the light catches them.
Remember to leave comments along the blog hop, to be in with a chance to win a $25 gift certificate to spend in the PPP store. There are two chances to win each day of the hop! Comments must be left by 11:59 PM PDT on 11/20/2018. Winners will be picked randomly along the blog hop and announced on the PPP blog!
Thank you so much for visiting my blog today. I'm the last stop! Hope you enjoyed hopping along.
This is the second day of the hop. Do also check out the fabulous inspiration from day 1, and leave comments on each stop for a chance to win!
Thank you for taking the time to comment too. I read and appreciate every one!
Adored all the various cards along the way from penguins to the adorable cats. Both penguins and cats on my wish list along with many others. Thanks for sharing, great card!
How fun is this card!
Love the kitties under the tree! Cute card!
I'd frame it if I got this sweet card! Love the tree and those adorable kitties!
Cute card! Love the calico cat and the coloration on the tree!
Sweet card. Thanks for sharing!!!
This card is so cute! I love this layering Tree die and your coloring on the cats is fabulous.
OH these sweet kitties look adorable under that beautiful tree, amazing coloring on this pretty card!
Oh my goodness. COuld not be any cuter!
Perfectly sweet and festive card! Gorgeous tree, composition and coloring. Those kitties are just too sweet.
Wow….love your coloring….Christmas trees is amazing.
What a cute card you've made!
I love your tree, and those kittens are adorable!
Oh my goodness, so cute! These animals looks so excited for Chrstiams! Love it!
Thanks for sharing this super sweet card. I love it!
Christmas kitties!!!! always a great thing to have Christmas kitties!!!
I really like your color pallet for this card. The way you colored the Layed Tree die cut coordinates so nicely with the pink ornaments and pearls you added to the tree. The tree is cute just like the kitties.
I seriously squealed when I saw this. So gorgeous!!! Love the kitties.
What fabulous coloring! Those cats are so adorable; I want to reach out and pet them. And the light green of the tree with the pink ornaments is a really nice color combo. Thanks for sharing with us!
Adorable!!! Those kitties are so cute!!
so many cool techniques on this blog. Love the great design too.
Beautiful card! Love the look of your tree!


CLUB OFFICIALS . . . .
GROUND DETAILS . . .
Shawe View is situated approximately six miles south west of Manchester.
The Four Founder Members of Trafford F. C.
Dave a former schoolteacher, now Director of Sport at Ashton-on-Mersey School started his football career with Stretford Boys at 16 years of age. Played one season at Manchester City for the 'B' team, then he moved on to Old Alts in the Manchester League. Spent the next sixteen years at Flixton FC as a player, groundsman, programme editor, secretary, assistant manager & finally as manager.
In five seasons Dave took Flixton from the Manchester League to the N.W.C.L. Division One.
In 1990 he became a founder member & manager of North Trafford (now Trafford) & has taken them from the Mid Cheshire League Division Two to the North West Counties League Division One Championship & promotion to the Unibond League in season 1996-97.
In that same season he was voted N.W.C.L. Manager of the Year. During their debut season in the Unibond League Dave led Trafford to the Unifilla Cup Final beating Lincoln United 3-1 on their ground. Due to increasing work commitments Dave stepped down in December 1998, but he is still involved with the club organising fund raising events and is our Press Secretary.


Series: By my Spirit (1), Miscellaneous (1).
(Part of the By my Spirit series).
Speaker Ceagan Louw & Dean Trollip on February 18, 2018 (Sunday Morning).
Speaker Ceagan Louw & Dean Trollip on October 15, 2017 (Sunday Morning).


If you love to surf but hate that your boards take up so much space, surfboard wall racks are the solution. By following a few simple steps, you can build your own, and at an affordable cost.
Mark and drill the holes on the 2-by-4. With your ruler, find and mark the center of your board at the top, bottom and middle. Next, line up the straight edge with your marks and make a pencil mark every 12 to 14 inches. Once you have marked the entire length of the board, drill your holes with a bit the same size as your dowels. Try to make the holes as uniform as possible. The holes should be about ¾ of an inch deep.
For each hole that you made in the wood you will need a 24-inch dowel. You can buy them pre-cut or carefully cut your own using your chop saw. Once you have all of your dowels ready, it is time to attach them. Put wood glue at one end of your dowel and push it into a hole. Repeat this with all your dowels. The dowels should fit snuggly into their holes. Allow the wood glue to dry.
Next, use your drill to put pilot holes in each dowel. The holes should be small, and there should be one at the end of each dowel. Screw an eye into each hole, making sure it is snug. Cut pieces of nylon string to connect to the eyes. Each piece of string should be a little longer than the distance between dowels. Securely tie hooks to the ends of your strings. By hooking the string into two neighboring eyes, you will keep the boards in place. Next, use pipe insulation to pad the dowels by wrapping it around each dowel. Secure them with zip ties.
The surfboard wall racks need to be mounted into studs. Locate the studs with a stud finder and mark their locations. You need two people to hold the rack against the wall while you adjust the height and level the rack. While your helpers continue to hold the rack, screw it into the studs and ensure it is secure. Once your rack is mounted, cut a scrap of shaggy carpet the size of the space below the rack and lace it there. Don't forget to personalize your rack with stickers or other touches.


Kim Kardashian and many other celebs are opting to have a new procedure called "Loub Job" to reduce the pain of hallux limitus. Hallux limitus, often known as stiffness in the big toe, makes it very difficult for women to wear high heels.
The procedure calls for restoring lubrication and lost cushioning to the joint in the big toe with the help of hyaluronic acid injected into the foot. Those suffering from hallux limitus have reduced range of motion in the big toe in addition to increased amount of pain in the joint. With the help of this new procedure, high heel wearers can go pain free for months at a time.
Hallux limitus is a very uncomfortable condition to live with. If you have any concerns about hallux limitus, contact one of our podiatrists of New England Foot and Ankle Specialists. Our doctors will treat your foot and ankle needs.
Hallux limitus is a medical condition which stands for "stiff toe." This is an arthritic condition in which movement of the big toe is constrained. The pain is usually allocated between the large toe and foot. This condition is not of serious matter, but should be treated to avoid a hallux rigdus.
Toe pain is common, therefore many people tend to overlook this issue and believe it's nothing serious. But, if you notice sharp pain, bone growths, tightness around the joint and even changes in the way you walk. It is vital to see a podiatrist before your condition worsens.
Genetics – hallux limitus can be inherited from your parents, or someone can be who is born with a predisposition to arthritis as well.
Injury – overuse can cause trauma to the joints leading to extra bone growth and wear away the cartilage.
X-rays are the most common used methods for diagnosis; it is also performed with a test to see the general function of the big toe.
Lifestyle & Physical Therapy – having motion and massages to the given area will help slow down complications and gradually increase flexibility.
R.I.C.E. – stands for rest, ice, compression and elevation. Combining the R.I.C.E method with other treatments is proven effective.
It is important that when one suffers any kind of foot injury, one should not over exert the toe with strenuous physical activity. Too much activity can destroy the cartilage, making the toe even stiffer.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact our offices located in Reading, MA. We offer the newest diagnostic tools and technology to treat your foot and ankle needs.
Read more about hallux limitus.


text:
Ленинский район — бывшая административно-территориальная единица в составе Уральской области РСФСР в СССР.

Существовал с 1923 до 1932 гг. Административный центр — село Григорьевское.

Население
Численность населения района по данным переписи населения 1926 года составляла 28 074 человека, в том числе русские — 99,4 %, белорусы — 0,4 %. Всё население в 1926 году было сельским.

На 1 января 1931 года население района составило 28 900 жителей.

История
Ленинский район был образован в 1923 году в составе Пермского округа Уральской области РСФСР.

По состоянию на 1928 год Ленинский район имел площадь в 1300 км² и в него входили 630 сельских населённых пунктов, которые объединялись в 11 сельсоветов:

В 1930 году все округа в области и по стране были упразднены. Ленинский район стал входить непосредственно в состав Уральской области РСФСР.

Постановлением Президиума ВЦИК от 1 января 1932 года года Ленинский район был упразднён, а его территория была полностью включена в Нытвенский район.

В 1934 году территория бывшего района стала частью Свердловской области, а в 1938 году — частью новообразованной Пермской области.

В 1952—1956 гг. здесь временно существовал Григорьевский район Пермской области.

Примечания

Упразднённые районы Уральской области

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


In September 2016 Lord Farmer, in partnership with the membership charity Clinks, was commissioned by the government to investigate how connecting prisoners with their families can improve offender wellbeing, assist in keeping the public safe and reduce reoffending.
The findings were published in August 2017, and found that close ties between prisoners and key family members can significantly reduce the risk of reoffending – which costs society £15 billion every year.
My report is not sentimental about prisoners' families, as if they can, simply by their presence, alchemise a disposition to commit crime into one that is law abiding.
However, I do want to hammer home a very simple principle of reform that needs to be a golden thread running through the prison system and the agencies that surround it. That principle is that relationships are fundamentally important if people are to change.
The Ministry of Justice has already started developing a strategy which will take forward recommendations from the review.
Progress is being made on a number of the recommendations, including giving governors the budget and flexibility to spend their resources appropriately to help prisoners keep important family ties.
Alongside this the government has started piloting significant relationship performance measures which will provide crucial guidance to deliver more consistent services in areas such as visitations across the entire prisons estate.
The recommendations have been welcomed by Justice Secretary David Lidington who has set out his commitment to creating calm and ordered prison environments to deliver more effective rehabilitation.
Speaking today, he echoed Lord Farmer's view that family relationships are essential to reducing reoffending.
Families can play a significant role in supporting an offender and I am grateful to Lord Farmer for his dedication and research on this important issue.
We are committed to transforming prisons into places of safety and reform and we recognise the need to provide those in our care with stable environments, and opportunities to change their behaviour.
There are numerous examples of good practice in this area, and we will continue work on a strategy to best support offender needs. That has to start with the numbers of prison officers available to support offenders which is why we are increasing staffing number by 2,500.
Lord Farmer's review reflects on progress that has been made in this area over recent years, with many prisons already having defined programmes which puts family relationships at the centre.
Innovative schemes and partnerships with local organisations are also vital vehicles for preparing men for release, and there are already proven partnerships in this area such as Storybook Dads, who help fathers keep in contact with their children, and Partners of Prisoners, who work with prisons to deliver more welcoming visitor environments.


text:
Parliamentary elections were held in Iraq on 18 December 1937 to elect the members of Chamber of Deputies.

Introduction
After the assassination of Bakr Sidqi, the military leader of the 1936 coup d'état, Hikmat Sulayman's government resigned. Jamil al-Midfai was selected to form the new government. His government subsequently sought to dissolve the parliament that supported the coup d'état and Sulayman's government. Parliament was eventually dissolved on 26 August 1937.

Results
Elections were held on 18 December 1937 amid public discontent with Sulayman's government and the military coup's leaders. Members of the former Sulayman government, leftists, pro-military candidates were defeated in the elections. The new parliament convened on 23 December 1937 and most members supported al-Midfai continuing as Prime Minister.

Aftermath
The new parliament continued its meetings until the al-Midfai government resigned on 25 December 1937 and a new government was formed by Nuri al-Said. Due to disagreement within the new government, Parliament was dissolved again on 22 February 1939 and fresh elections were held in March 1939.

References

Iraq
1937
1937 in Iraq