The Walking Dead: Guts

One of the reasons I was so happy to get together with John was that, with him, I no longer had to pretend I liked hiking and outdoorsy stuff. I appreciate nature and hate to see the natural world raped by crappy prefab housing and strip malls, but I don’t want to be out in it.

Lori Grimes in the woods? That’s how I am in nature (but, I’m not gathering mushrooms; I’m back at camp in front of the fire with a beer in one hand and a hot dog on a stick in the other). Doesn’t matter if it’s camping (yes, I’ve done this – twice) or in the park down the block (they won’t let me roast weenies there). Every snap of a twig, every crunch of a leaf, every branch blowing in the wind is something that is coming to eat me.

And not in a sexytime way like Lori’s excursion into the woods turned out to be. Which wasn’t really sexytime at all, considering the abundance of twigs and the sensitive places that can be stabbed by them. Just saying.

Pokey.

Other Walking Dead thoughts:

• Tools and climbing. You can’t just get behind a door or climb a ladder to escape anymore. They’ve already figured out how to use simple tools (beating the glass door down with a rock). They’re already learning to climb. These zombies are creeping me the hell out.
• We have our first moral dilemma: in a hurry, do we leave the white trash piece of human waste to die or do we cut him loose and bring him with us? T-Dog chose to cut him loose which, unfortunately, didn’t turn out too well. I would love to be so evolved as to say I’d do the same, but I don’t know that I would.
• I’m neither proud nor ashamed to admit that.
• Seriously, though. People like that are a soul-sucking drain at work and in life when we’re not in a zombie apocalypse. That guy was obviously holding on to his living world idiocy because that was all he had in the face of this madness – how can a person like that possibly be a productive force in a survival of the species situation?
• This is my suburban white upbringing talking, now. I didn’t cringe when Rick took the axe to that corpse and he and Glenn rubbed entrails all over themselves, but I cringed every time Dixon said that word. I’ve been conditioned against to the point where I can’t even think it. I said it once when I was 7 without any idea of what it meant and that was the only time in my life that my mom smacked the $h!t out of me. So, entrails = OK. That word = pukey. Is that messed up?
• Entrails! The hottest accessory in the zombie apocalypse! It’s the new mink.
• These zombies are effing amazing. I want to go to Frank Darabont’s zombie school, if only to meet Kevin Bacon, who I’m pretty sure has already played two different zombies.

Lastly, I wonder what it’s like to watch The Walking Dead without having read the books. I already know what happens to most of these people and that likely creates a different viewing experience for me. Some characters, every time I see them I want to cry.

So, those of you who haven’t read the books. . . what do you feel when you see the survivors? Do you have hope?

Lisa Fary is a graduate of the creative writing program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She’s angry that it’s 2010 and she still doesn’t have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram.

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