The New York Times has a rather interesting piece on zombies, titled “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead.” Even that esteemed newspaper can’t ignore the zombie phenomenon and seeks to find the underlying reasons for their rise in popularity.

The hypothesis is compelling, if not strikingly concise: “Zombies are just so easy to kill.” According to the author, battling zombies provides a vivid allegory for our repetitious, Internet-oriented lives. However many emails we delete, YouTube videos we watch, or news sites we frequent, the information is relentless and inexhaustible. We do our best to manage this overload, but one slip-up and we’re overcome.

Zombies are easy to kill, but they keep coming, and coming, and coming.

These are all great and capture the dark, diabolical essence of zombies. But a relatively new and unknown genre of electronic music may be more suitable: dubstep. I’ll let this mashup demonstrate:

Dubstep’s cadence stands out as jerky and lurching, reminiscent of a zombie’s walk. The wobbling, grimey, and growling basslines are distressed and unsettling, but strangely hypnotic, much like a zombie’s moan. The layers of samples and effects often contribute an eerie atmosphere. Even dubstep producers recognize the similarities. Listen to this, this (embedded below), this, and this.

There’s zombies in there!

It appears that you can keep an eye on Zombie Michael Jackson by following @ZombJacko on Twitter (fortunately, we cannot claim credit for this account).

Artist and toymaker Brian Colin created some small acrylic paintings of a zombie lego invasion. Legos + Gore = awesome. Check them out here.

(via BoingBoing)

There are some fantastic-looking comics among this year’s free offerings, such as Attack Of The Alterna-Zombies!, which features Jesus Hates Zombies. FEARNet has a preview of several pages of Jesus Hates Zombies — here’s a nice snippet with Jesus, Abraham Lincoln and a zombie horde:

We can’t wait to get our hands on some of these on Saturday — thanks Free Comic Book Day crew!

Zombie Hooker Nightmare is a silly, free Flash game on the Adult Swim website, where you’re a hooker who needs to find a john and make some cash in a world overrun by slow, mindless zombies. It’s an easy time waster, and the gameplay is … well, pretty familiar. There are tons of mini games just like it … minus the hookers of course.

The Zombie Slash team—we’re currently lounging across a couch talking about zombies and video games, living the glamorous life of the horror fan blogger—suspects that the reason behind all these zombie mini games is not simply because zombies are awesome (even though they are). It’s also because zombies are easy enemies for game developers to create. The game reviewers at NextGenWalkthroughs agreed with us in their recent walkthrough of Resident Evil 5:

I think that’s one of the reasons why there have been so many zombie games lately: because zombie AI is extremely easy to do, because they’re dumb, they go in a line for you, they b-line for you, they’re not ducking behind cover. (YouTube link)

But then again, we love zombies. So if you want to kill a few minutes of your otherwise dreary day blasting a few dumb zombies, who are we to stop you?

The organizers are responding by saying they meant no offense, and to please have tolerance on all sides. In a secularizing country (where 15% of Americans have no religion at all) their satirical date choice is far from shocking. But is it offensive?

Comments left on the event’s Facebook page include harsh (and sometimes trolling) criticism such as “Having this on easter will be perceived as being anti christian and mocking jesus,” and “the timing on Easter is clearly offensive.” Are these comments coming from actual zombie walk participants, or from roving bands of Christian e-soldiers? Easter zombie walks aren’t unprecedented. And considering that the Easter Bunny is more iconic of Easter to many Americans than Jesus’ resurrection, the zombie walk’s timing is unlikely to offend the mainstream.

What’s the point of a zombie walk? They’re intended to be provocative. This Easter, Boston is taking the bait.

(Image via killmargot.com)

We decided to contribute to the Photoshop topic “zombie celebrity couples” with a Zombie Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen (shown at the premiere of Shaun of the Dead). We later got an anonymous tip that led us to uncover startling evidence that the Olsens may actually be zombies. Consider the following:

• In 2006, a highly reputable Hollywood gossip blog reported that Mary Kate & Ashley are not only zombies, but a unique breed that prefers to feed on babies.
• In 2007, Hollywood Zombies began manufacturing a Scary Kate & Ghastly playing card, depicting the twins as zombies in the midst of a massacre.
• Neither Olsen twin issued a response.
• In fall 2008, PETA released Trollsen Twins Halloween masks, allegedly due to their fur-wearing, but many concluded that the faces on the masks looked like zombies rather than trolls.
• Just before Halloween 2008, Ashley Olsen blames the “scary” paparazzi for turning her into the “wreck” that she is. Was Ashley Olsen infected by a zombie paparazzi horde?

Will either of these baby-brain-eating twins lead the zombocalypse? We may not know for sure till it’s too late, but we’re betting on the one on the left (we still can’t tell them apart).

Saw this photo of a zombie menacingly lurching down the aisle at an auction of foreclosed homes, probably attracted to the rapid-fire speech of the auctioneer. Isn’t it interesting how blasé the audience is toward it? Times are tough indeed.

Photo from Ozier Muhammad /The New York Times

In an op-ed piece for the New York Times, Paul Krugman rails against government officials for overvaluing troubled assets, what he calls “toxic waste,” and underselling the danger of “zombies,” bankrupt financial institutions whose survival depends on government aid. As Economist’s View aptly observes, “If you try to bring dead assets back to life, you may end up creating zombie banks.”

Zombies? Toxic waste? Times are tougher than I thought.

Photo by Tod Seelie