rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

I read this book a while ago, “World War Z.” a work of fiction recounting the recently conlcuded zombie apocalypse.
I like that there’s an entire subgenre of zombie fiction. this video rental place I would frequent during my college daze, Plan 9, it had an entire section devoted to zombie cinema. granted, it was only a shelf, but it was still a hell of a collection. and I watched a lot of those flicks, before moving on to the werewolf genre.
of course, you run the risk of beating an idea to death, when you have so many crackerjacks taking a swing at the same topic, but the risk is worth it. you’ll have hits (the original “Dawn of the Dead”), and misses (“Land of the Dead”), but the hits will be good. “World War Z” is a hit. and the last I heard, Brad ‘fucking Jennifer Aniston got boring so I moved on to Angelina Jolie’ Pitt’s production company bought the rights to the movie.
and I will wach the shit out of that movie.

anyway, in the book  — and I’m going on memory, here – the zombie outbreak begins in China, where someone gets bitten while swimming in a newly-flooded reservoir. the authorities quarantine the area, try to prevent the infection from spreading. of course, no one calls it what it really is, because no one actually believes zombies exist. right? right?

well, check this shit out: Chinese authorities have sealed off a rural town in Qinghai province (like any of us have any idea where that is) because of an outbreak of pneumonic plague.
plague! I bet you didn’t even think it still existed. it’s okay, don’t be bashful about it; I didn’t. but apparently, there’s all sorts of shit you can still die from out there in the world. the New York Times says a dozen people come down with pneumonic plague  in the States each year.
bugs, bugs, bugs, and dirty drinkin’ water. malaria kills over a million people in the world each year and sickens a lot more, mostly children. most of this stuff, of course, could be treated, if we bothered to get decent medical care to the billion and change living in poverty. but when you can’t even fix your own broken goddamned health care system (Pfizer has rights too!), what hope do you have for extending your goodwill to the rest of the planet? I’ve got a fridge full of food and a medicine cabinet full of aspirin, and if I could ship half of it to Niger or Bangladesh in a box and know it’d make it where it needs to go, I would. but I don’t.
fuck. what a depressing series of thoughts this post turned out to be. let’s us brighten up with some mother and child reunion.