Running the zombie Christmas mall gauntlet

it’s Christmas again…and that means a visit to (dramatic chord)… The Mall.

The Zombie Christmas Maul

It’s the same every year. The endless shuffle of zombiefied shoppers, drifting around shiny glass-and-glitz caverns, a mass of humanity with glazed eyes and shopping bags, punctuated by toddlers who lurch aimlessly out from the crowd, shrieking and hyperventilating. There are teenage boys who smell like they’ve just showered with a cocktail of propionic acid and brevibacteria, girls who giggle and text somebody three feet away, just because they can, all endlessly circling like – well, endlessly circling things who like circling endlessly.

And then, in the midst of this glittering temple to the worst excesses of shallow consumerism and the transient disposability of post-industrial A-gen society…Father Christmas. He’s moved here from the North Pole apparently.

There’s something about these places that turns the brain to mush and reduces people to zombiefied numbness. I am not allowed to punk them – you know, do the zombie walk behind these  shoppers and murmur ‘braaaaaiins’. Well, I can, but She Who Must Be Obeyed has to walk on the other side of the mall atrium for a while afterwards.

But honestly!

It’s done deliberately. People buy more if their mind’s switched off. And I have to feel sorry for the poor folks that have to work in these places. Malls are the twenty-first century equivalent of the workhouse when it comes to conditions.

Every mall I’ve been to from North Sydney to Lower Hutt to Bangkok has been exactly the same. The Australia and New Zealand ones even look the same. Is this the unity in diversity beloved of anthropologists?

I’ve got readers of this blog from Melbourne to Florida, from the Netherlands to Cape Town, from Houston to New York to France to Moscow to Dunedin. Am I right that it’s the same everywhere? The look. The raw horror of it all. The commercialism? The mindless advertising. The glitz. The ….the…

“Braaaainnns….”

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012 

Heads up folks – are you ready for the zombie apocalypse?

My sister has a plan for handling the zombie apocalypse when it comes to her home near Utrecht. A scheme for the instant when they burst into her workroom moaning ’hersenen… heeeeersenen’ (well, they’re Dutch undead…)

She’s a fabric artist who dyes and spins artisan-craft wools. The spinning equipment, she tells me, is easily able to defeat the living dead. She hasn’t detailed her ideas – but I guess if you see a headline like ‘Soest zombies gemaakt om te breien’, you’ll know what happened.

Got me thinking. That apocalypse might happen anywhere. Do I have anything in my writing office to deal with the ravening dead? If I was in the US I’d give the zombies a burst with the kitchen cupboard Mac-10 before advancing on the undead horde with the family Mossberg .410. If I were an Australian I’d flick a couple of boomerangs, stuff the nearest zombie into the esky, slam the lid, then parade out in my budgie-smugglers and strike them all blind. Or if I were Bear Gryllis, I’d turn the first into a survival shelter, four into firewood, and make the rest into a helicopter to fly home..

However, I live in New Zealand. No spinning wheels. No guns. There are budgie-smugglers, but I don’t own any such shreddies and never will. Am I gonna die? No chance. You see, I have the ultimate anti-zombie device.  In fact every Kiwi home has one – and Peter Jackson showed us what any good Kiwi zombie hunter could do with one. Bwahahaha! Yup – the common or garden rotocut. Eat spinning steel, undead zombies!

So – when zombies burst into my writing office, I’ll be out the window, into the shed, and desperately tearing at the pull start on the old Masport. Ours is a bit hard to start…Hmmn… Niggling worry. And I do have one other little niggle too. If the living dead outnumber the living 1,500,000,000 to 1, who says somebody else will be the zombie? Just asking, you understand.

What would you do if the zombies burst in while you were quietly working on the computer?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

Tuesday quote: your zombie apocalypse is in the mall

Overheard in my local mall the other weekend: ‘This place would be really defensible in a zombie apocalypse.’

Handy to know. I had thought of hiding out in the local pub, I saw a movie once where they tried that. Didn’t work of course. Wouldn’t at my local, either, I suspect. Does your local mall shape up the same way? What would you do in a zombie apocalypse?

Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012

The 2011 Christmas Zombie Mall Shuffle

It’s Christmas again, and yesterday that meant it was time for She Who Must Be Obeyed to drag me off to (drum roll) The Mall.

As far as I am concerned malls are vampires that suck money and will-to-live, all glitz-and-mirror with endless rows of cheap jewellery shops, pedicure booths and smartphone outlets. They are identical from Melbourne to Luton – hey, I even found one in Bangkok (the Siam Centre) that could have been transplanted from anywhere else. All of them home to endless hordes of once-were-humans, the shopping dead who amble vacantly in witless circles, slack mouths breathing that dread word  – ‘credit caaaaaaard…’

Shopping in the mall for me consists of hurtling into the place, picking up essential bloke stuff (1/16 PzKW VI Tiger I model, engine oil, power tools, that sort of thing). Then getting out. Fast.

The Zombie Christmas Maul

She Who Must Be Obeyed has other ideas: ‘That’s a nice coat. Try to look interested. Now we need to get cards and. OOOH, SHINY! Yes, we need to get to the – er – Matthew, stop wandering off. CROCKERY SHOP! Oh how about those towels, we need new towels, why don’t we sit down at this coffee place or try that Indian take-away even though it made you sick last time and…IS THAT A FLYING SHARK?’

There is no escape. Malls are the Hotel California. Even if you can find an exit, it’s guarded by armies of young mums with toddlers zing-splat bungied to their wrists, four year olds who back into you, randomly squealing like ambulatory car alarms, dads with a blank look and hang-dog expression, honk-voiced teenage boys who smell, old ladies with walkers, lost husbands…and…and…

Bah humbug.

Copyright © Matthew Wright