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The Latest News From Jackson Press - Keeping the Zombies at bay!

Todays News from Jackson Press will discuss zombies.  Yes, zombies.  You know, those flesh-hungry undead who haunt the night, seeking hapless victims to gorge their lifeless mouths on.  Yeah, those things.

You see, zombies are making a come back and no one will be safe if we’re not prepared.  There’s even a survival guide (click here) to help those of us who are unfamiliar with zombies, their powers, and their tastes in flesh.  The survival guide tells you how to recognize a zombie outbreak (ranging from class 1 to the sinister and deadly class 3) and how to choose the proper weapon to effectively dispatch the living dead with minimal fuss and muss.

Yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about zombies over the last couple days.  I guess it all started after the missus and I went to see Will Smith’s latest movie, “I Am Legend”.

The wife and I are fans of Will Smith (click here if you have no idea who Will Smith is).  Holly and I both think he’s a pretty good actor and, for the most part, makes pretty good movies (Wild, Wild West is an exception).

Just look at a quick list of Smith’s cinematic classics - “Independence Day“, “Men In Black (1 & 2)”, “Hitch”, “I, Robot” , “Ali”, and “Enemy of the State“.  I even liked “Bad Boys”, although the wife was bored.  But all in all, we consider Will Smith to be the Tom Hanks of our generation - we believe that Smith, like Hanks, typically doesn’t pick a bad role, so we’re always willing to throw our hard-earned money down on a ticket to see his movies, because we know they’ll be good.

So we saw “I Am Legend”, which is based on a 1954 novella by Richard Matheson that influenced the modern zombie genre we all fear and enjoy today.

Me, I liked the movie.  But I tend to be a sucker for apocalyptic stories about the end of the world and how the hardiest of humans survive and soldier on against insurmountable odds, especially when chased by flesh-eaters!  Something about that concept appeals to the survivalist in me, stockpiling canned goods and ammunition, roaming the wasted landscape in search of a new world.

In “I Am Legend,” Will’s character, Robert Neville, is the lone survivor in New York after a man-made plague wipes out most of humanity and turns the remaining survivors into flesh-eating zombies.  He farms, hunts, and gathers supplies during the day, and hides with his dog in his house at night as the zombies come out to feed.

Trust me, the premise is better than it sounds.  In fact, Holly gave the film high praise, in her own unique way.

Me - “Didn’t you like that?”

She - “It was alright.”

Me - “Come on, you gotta admit it was pretty good for a zombie flick.”

She - “Well, yeah, I guess it was good - for a zombie flick.  And I don’t like zombie movies.”

High praise, indeed.

So I spent the last few days thinking about zombies and zombie dogs (yes, dogs are also susceptible to the virus), glancing out the window into the dark to see if anything’s moving in the shadows, wondering if the shotgun’s still loaded, wondering where I put the key to the gun safe where the shotguns are, wondering how many blasts from a shotgun it takes to kill a zombie.  What’s the dog growling at?

Then I started thinking about the virus that caused the zombies.  In “I Am Legend”, it’s a cure for cancer that goes awry.  In my other favorite zombie movie, “28 Days Later“, it’s a fictional virus called the Rage Virus.  It’s always a virus of some kind.  And that reminded me an awful lot of the SARS pandemic in China, where several hundred people died and everyone wore a surgical mask.

The thought of a global pandemic scares the hell out of me, even more so than zombies.  And the situations are frighteningly similar - stay in the house, stay away from other people, protect yourself and your family, shoot anyone with glowing red eyes and drooling blood.

It’s just a matter of time.  Be prepared.  And while you’re awaiting the zombie outbreak, please enjoy our latest Civil Servitude.

I Am Legend!