It's time to become zombies. I don't mean on Goddamned Facebook. I mean for really reals.

Look, I'm not afraid to admit that I'm considerably older than your average internet-dwelling racist 12-year-old. My first computer was a room full of Roosevelt's New Deal hobos that did the math, in real-time, for me to play Pac Man. I enjoyed text adventures back when Infocom employees would personally come to your house and live-parse your commands. A bygone time. I still look fantastic, but let's face it: I poop terra cotta soldiers. On the plus side, I have also gained the dimly recalled aggregate of a lifetime of horrible experiences, and feel an unnatural urge to pass this knowledge on to the younger generation, in the hopes that it will somehow help and prepare you lousy venereal-diseased hooligans for the sucking doom that's been laid out for you like an inverse Thanksgiving dinner.

Zombiefication. Get ready to take the plunge.

The first lie in regards to zombiefication that needs to be addressed is that zombies are fictional. As if people would be so hopelessly fixated on something that doesn't exist that they'd make movies and time-wasting social networking apps based on a figment of George Romero's imagination. Poppycock!

The next lie is that zombies are a condition, the result of a space-probe covered in zombie radiation or a biblical curse or an ethnic thing or a government experiment or a monkey enraging whatever-the-fuck-that-was or some sort of messed-up Hentai thing. Nope.

What you have to understand is that becoming a zombie is a matter of choice.

The first time people went zombie was back in the fart-smelling sepia days of the Great Depression. Out of work, homeless and starving -- what would you do? Be a Hobo? Shit no! It became rapidly apparent to many of the impoverished, disenfranchised citizens of the United States that their only recourse was to gather together in large, loping masses and gorge on the flesh of their fellow man.

See, you have to understand the level of desperation going on back then. You'll understand soon enough. These things move in cycles. Most of you are too fetal to have experienced the late 60's, when culture-clash, the Vietnam War, Yoko Ono, a struggling economy, a few dozen political assassinations, and a fake moon landing combined to make people go zombie. Mostly in rural Pennsylvania. There might have been some kind of agricultural crisis too, I can't recall. But there wasn't a farmhouse in that state that wasn't besieged by mopey, penniless and sometimes naked members of the proletariat, looking for human nosh and hoping their boarded-in victims fought amongst each other until their divisiveness became a greater danger than the zombies themselves, creating vulnerabilities that then made the zombies the greater danger again, and uh ... so on and so forth.

The next zombie invasion was in 1977, during yet another economic crisis, not to mention oil shortages, aerosol hairspray, the birth of disco, and how everything just looked sort of grainy and washed-out.
Mall invasions were the undead cannibal attack du jour. I am not ashamed to admit that I joined a few of those blue-faced, clumsy gatherings. I was youngish and it seemed like a romp. Unfortunately at that time I was considering going Vegan, and was quite conflicted. I ended up chewing and spitting out a lot.

So now here we are, 2000-whatever-it-is. Zombie interest is still peaking, almost in spite of George Romero's diminishing abilities. We are engulfed in a new and terrifying economic downturn; a new misguided war; a new unstoppable environmental crisis; foreign countries planning their own fake moon landings; a new gathering of inspirational leaders lining up to get shot. Clearly, it's the perfect climate for a Zombie Apocalypse.

But hey! Don't just go rushing into zombieness. Relax. Zombieism isn't a solo venture! There's nothing more embarrassing than brashly mauling someone on the bus, rearing up with a mouthful of blood and intestine, and everyone else is like, Jesus, whatta asshole.

Just be patient. Someday soon you're gonna be waiting in a bread or toilet-paper queue, and, like magic, your horde will form.

And I'll be right there with you, staggering and drooling at your side.

Just don't be a running zombie, cuz you'll look like a total dick.