Tossing It Out

Showing posts with label zombies. Show all posts

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Zoology (Elements of Blogging) #AtoZChallenge

Zombies seem like a natural blog theme since there is so much popularity in this genre, but Zoology might be an even better topic. The photo opportunities are endless and nearly everyone enjoys seeing animals and learning about their behavior.

Since there are zoos throughout the world, just focusing on different zoos offers a wealth of material that can keep a blog going for a long time. Even concentrating on one large zoo you will never run out of information and news about that one location. The famous San Diego Zoo has several blogs affiliated with it (see link below), but there's no reason why anyone else couldn't step in with their own blog on this zoo or some other well known zoo.

The final letter of the alphabet might be limiting as far as number of themes you can use, but zoology is virtually unlimited in its range. For that matter, a blogger can certainly go a long way using zombies as a theme.

Some Zoology Blogs:

Animal Bliss

San Diego Zoo Blogs

Bizarre Zoology

Still on the Track

Wild Woman's Wolfpack

Now that We've Reached Z End?

What's next?

A to Z Reflections Post

The A to Z Reflections Post is a tradition that began after the first 2010 Challenge. This is the time when you tell about your experiences with the Challenge, share blogs that you found particularly interesting, and register your complaints or compliments about A to Z. You can tell us all about the good as well as the bad. The Reflections Post Linky List will go up on Monday May 4th. You can put up your reflections post anytime after the Challenge is over up until Friday May 8th and then after the List has gone live you add the link leading directly to your Reflections post. That's important so I hope you're paying attention. The Reflection Post Linky List links need to lead directly to your Reflections post and not to your general blog URL.

One More Thing!

Also, if you've survived the 2015 Blogging from A to Z April Challenge why not order a t-shirt to let everyone know about your accomplishment! T-shirt worthy warm weather is upon us and you can start some conversation about your blogging at your summer outings or while just out and about. Become a walking A to Z Challenge billboard and provide an opening to talk about your own blog. You might get some new readers while you're at it!

To order your A to Z Survivor Tee visit A to Z Challenge Survivor.

A to Z!! What a challenge it has been!

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Friday, November 7, 2014

"I'm the Zombie? How'd That Happen?"

...with Battle of the Bands results!

Mr Zombie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back in May, Robin at Your Daily Dose got me to thinking about issues she brought up in a post that you can find here. In my comment responding to her post I contemplated some of the metaphorical implications regarding the popularity of the zombie genres found so often in modern culture. Thinking that perhaps my ponderings might make for an interesting blog post, I tucked away my thoughts in my idea file to be pulled out later. My recent blog series about death and zombies seemed to be a good place to finally bring these ideas out as a conclusion to that series.

Over the past few posts on Tossing It Out, as well as a post at my memoir blog Wrote By Rote, I've been discussing the topics of death and zombies partly in relation to the Halloween season, but primarily to call attention to my Battle of the Bands installment that featured the song "When I'm Dead and Gone". I'll be getting to the winner of the BOTB contest shortly, but first I want to present my theory about our increasing societal obsession with zombies.

This topic has been addressed by many others. Andrew Leon directed me to one of his own posts, "Zombies: A Cultural Metaphor" from a few years ago at his blog Strange Pegs. In short, Andrew offers the concept that our fascination and fear of zombies is related to issues regarding the influence of technology, corporations, and government on our society. You might want to go back and read his post to get the full story behind his theory.

Other theories I've found have suggested that the zombie metaphor extends to viruses, contagion, human isolation, paranoia, and the general fears that confront us. The Ebola Virus crisis has probably made others beside myself think about a future epidemic unlike any we've seen previously that could include reanimated corpses. Farfetched? Probably, but it makes for a good scary story.

Here is what came to my mind as I was commenting on Robin's previously mentioned blog post:

Regarding hope vs purpose. Personally I think internally hope is the force that drives any of us. Without hope we merely act on autopilot to get the days work done with nothing more to look forward to. Goals are the result of hope and the hope provides more meaning to the purpose.

From the outside though, as far as other people are concerned, the purpose is mainly what matters. Our hope may spread to others around us and inspire them, but on the whole the people we deal with are mainly interested in the purpose we serve.

The burger flipper may hope toward vacation time or a college degree and the purpose of the job is to get them to their goal, but the job is not their ultimate purpose. The guy waiting for his burger hopes that his burger is fixed right and the flipper has no purpose to him other to get his burger done.

Maybe a lot of the zombie stories metaphorically represent a world that increasingly consists of people who are losing hope and the burning internal desire to find ultimate purpose only to become hopeless empty shells merely left with the purpose to survive.

To take this thinking a step further I sense that many people today have a spiritual disconnect and rely on outside forces such as governmental or societal support. They are burdened with the desire to have more and do more which in turn leads to enslavement of debt, jobs they don't like, and a general lack of direction about where they are going in this life. Consequently they plod lifelessly from one day to the next from job to the shopping mall to do whatever else everyone else is doing. We all wait, stand in lines, and face frequent let-downs in our lives. What we do with these experiences and how we react to everything we encounter determines the amount of actual life we have burning within us. Some people don't take it so well and spend time complaining and just following the rest of the crowds who have little or no idea what's coming next.

There is certainly more that can be added to all this but I must move on to BOTB results.

Battle of the Bands: The Outcome

What I thought was going to be an essentially uneventful BOTB contest turned out to be a heated horse race. There were surprises like those voters who I thought would surely know the original version of "When I'm Dead and Gone" by McGuinness Flint who did not know the song. Maybe they just didn't remember it since it's a song that is not often played anywhere these days. A few of you knew the song but most did not.

As I somewhat expected in the case of those who did not know the song or the original artist several cast their votes based on the greater familiarity of Def Leppard. I was surprised that some voters did not like the song as I find it to be catchy and quite entertaining, an opinion shared by at least a third of the voters. But like I say it was a horse race all the way. As I read the comments and tallied the votes I could almost hear the sports announcer detailing the back and forth nature of the contest. This was one of my craziest BOTB posts ever as far as close voting goes.

My preferred version is the original by McGuinness Flint for the same reasons cited by some of you. The instrumentation, especially the mandolin and the solid drum backing, as well as the vocals give the song a better sound to my ears than the version by Def Leppard. Those hard rockin' Def boys did a fine job with the cover and it's grown on me through subsequent listenings, but I don't think they could ever surpass McGuinness Flint for my taste. I love this song--it's a catchy foot-tapping memorable romp and I can't understand why anyone wouldn't like it. But some of you didn't as indicated in your voting.

So how did my vote affect the outcome of the Battle? It almost puts McGuinness Flint in a tie with Def Leppard.

The Final Tally

McGuinness Flint 13

Def Leppard 14

The next Battle of the Bands posts will come on Saturday November 15th and I've got what will be one of my favorite matches so far. It's a pop song from a 1969 concept album by a hugely popular artist whose career spanned over half of the 20th century. The seemingly unlikely competitor is a very eclectic band that came together in the early 90's and is still active today. Be sure to join me for this one and I don't want to hear anyone say they don't like this coming song pick. How could you not like this song? Anyway, be here and find out for yourself.

Does my zombie theory hold credence in your estimation? What is your own opinion as to why zombies are so fascinating to so many? Do you know what my blog post title is derived from?

Monday, November 3, 2014

Zombie Acropolis

The Acropolis in Athens (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's not necessarily Greek to me why the zombie genre is so popular in modern culture. Humans have long been interested in reanimation and resurrection as well as the supernatural aspects of the living dead. We're scared and yet morbidly fascinated with the concept of zombies. I'll give you my theory about the popularity of zombies this coming Friday November 7th.

This post today is not a real post, or at least not in the sense you might expect. If anything this post is more related to what Alex J. Cavanaugh was talking about in his post that asked the question "Have authors killed blogging?" In short Alex was wondering if blogging has been hurt by too much promotion by authors.

I'm not trying to sell anything, but my post today is all about promotion. The "Zombie Acropolis" title is merely a come-on somewhat related to my most recent topics. As you might know, blogging experts recommend a catchy title to lure visitors to your posts. If for no other reason, I figured that my chosen title might lure a few folks to chide me for misspelling "apocalypse". And since zombies are an attraction of themselves I thought some zombie fans might stop by as well.

I don't mean to disappoint anyone, but count this as another blog experiment--like maybe Dr. Frankenstein might come up if he had been a blogger. Besides I've had this title sitting in my to-go queue since spring when I was developing my short blog posts for the summer vacation season.

By the way, on the subject of attention getting blog titles, there has only been one stand-out post traffic wise on Tossing It Out of late. For the most part traffic here is adequate, but not overwhelmingly amazing. Not viral. The posts where I've taken part in some fest or interactive event usually get the most visits. However the biggest surge on this blog in the past several months was the post with the title "That Wasn't Very Nice". I'm guessing that a lot of visitors were expecting some real dirt about something bad that happened. Instead they found a post about ballet and Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. I thought that the topic was very interesting, but judging from the relatively small number of comments compared to the high number of visits on that day I'm guessing that most visitors were not particularly interested in the topic I was presenting. I suppose that some might have thought I was not very nice in insinuating that they were going to get to read about something not very nice and they found a story on The Rite of Spring instead.

Still, I'm going to promote a few things right now. First don't forget the Wednesday Insecure Writer's Support Group monthly meeting to be held at hundreds of blogs including my own. My post will be staying kind of on topic with death, zombies, and whatever comes to my mind between now and then. Coming on Friday, as I mentioned earlier, I'll be divulging my zombie theory and announcing the winner of my most recent Battle of the Bands vote.

And speaking of voting, U.S. citizens don't forget to vote tomorrow Tuesday November 4th. Let's vote the old bums out and bring the new bums in. It's a pain in the bum, I know, but someone's got to stir the political pot now and then and that someone is us.

But whether you're voting in the political elections or not, don't forget the really important vote! If you haven't voted on your favorite song version in my Battle of the Bands please do so as soon as you've finished reading this outlandish post I've put up today. Please!

Aren't you glad I don't have a book to promote! Can you imagine?

Are you a fan of the zombie genre? What type of blog promotion annoys you the most? Is there anything that's keeping you from voting in the Battle of the Bands (and don't say you don't know anything about the music--you don't have to know anything, just listen)?

Now go vote at When I'm Dead and Gone.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

What Are We To Believe?

Melbourne Zombie Shuffle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With our greater access to knowledge via the media and the internet you'd think we'd be up to our brains in truth. Ironically all of this access has muddied the waters of information more than ever. Rumors, misinformation, and outright lies are continually disseminated throughout all channels available to us to the extent that sometimes it's difficult to know what we should actually believe.

Here are some examples:

Harmful substances: Various studies have shown that coffee can be bad for you while others suggest that it can be good for you. Some recent studies suggest that a couple cups a day can stave off or even prevent Alzheimer's and dementia. Similar conflicting result studies have come out about alcoholic beverages, eggs, and other products. Anyone remember the "studies" back in the fifties that suggested that smoking could be beneficial. There was a time not so long ago when smoking was prevalent in public places. I guess it depends on who's doing the study and what result they want to come up with. In the meantime much of the public is misguided and confused.

Global warming: We keep hearing all sorts of research indicating that the Earth is warming and the polar ice caps are melting. There have been suggestions from some camps that our coastal areas will eventually be flooded and adverse weather conditions such as hurricanes will increase endangering us all. Then there are the scientists who believe that we should be more concerned about global cooling. Some even suggest that we may be seeing the coming of another Ice Age. There are also the scientists and pundits who believe that the world climate goes in cycles and we will periodically have times of cooling and heating that are not influenced by anything humankind does.

Overpopulation: The concept that the Earth would be eventually unable to sustain the growing population was introduced by Thomas Robert Malthus in 1798. He advocated population control to keep the order of things in check. Paul Ehrlich revived the Malthus scare tactic in 1968 with his best selling book The Population Bomb. Now here we are nearly 50 years later with none of the predictions coming to pass quite like Ehrlich speculated. Famine and pestilence is not the result of overpopulation. Actually we could move everybody in the world to Texas and with the right infrastructure we could all live quite comfortably while turning the rest of the world into parks and recreation land. Anyone who's driven across Texas can imagine this. Texans would undoubtedly hate it if everyone moved there, but I'm just repeating an example others have given for illustrative purposes.

These are but three areas of debate that politicians, activists, scientists, doomsayers, and others like to banter about. I'm sure you can think of other studies as could I, but this is a blog and I want to keep this post within reasonable limits.

My Conclusion:

My own study shows that if you keep looking at all of these studies your brain will turn to mush and gradually seep out of your head. With your brain gone then you would become part of the zombie population in a constant quest for more brains.

Zombies are thrilled by this news as an increase in their population means an ever-growing zombie voter block. Of course it's probable that we already have a majority of zombie voters and we could see an influx of zombies eventually taking office in the United States.

Vampires think that prospect sucks. Vampires think a lot things should suck. Vampires are interested in all things sucky. Nearly all of those running things in government are vampires who have a need to keep the zombie population under their control. The vampires look for issues they can sink their teeth into so they can suck the life-blood out of the rest of us. They love having brain dead constituents who will follow their commands without any thought.

Have a frightful Halloween and may Election Day be a scary one--they usually are.

What is your favorite conspiracy? Do you think we stand a ghost of a chance in the coming election? Are you ready to move to Texas?

Battle of the Bands coming this Saturday November 1st. There are some clues about my BOTB theme in this post. Can you guess the song? This time around I'm offering versions of a 70's hit as performed by two groups that I like and you might enjoy as well. Nothing too controversial in this Battle. It's one of the most accessible I've had so far. Check it out!

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This Is Me--2024 A to Z Theme

Thursday, April 30, 2015

Zoology (Elements of Blogging) #AtoZChallenge