Zombie Book Club
Welcome to Zombie Book Club! We're a Podcast that's also a book club! We talk about Zombie / Apocalyptic horror novels, TV and movies.
Zombie Book Club
HOA Drama Can Prepare You for the Zombie Apocalypse | Zombie Book Club Podcast Ep 48
Have you ever wondered how the petty drama of your HOA meetings could prepare you for surviving a zombie apocalypse? Join us for a hilarious journey as we dissect the bizarre similarities between our homeowners association and a post-apocalyptic survivor group.
We talk about our evolving feelings toward our HOA and our grand plan to transform it into a resilient community ready for any disaster. Drawing inspiration from zombie games and our real-life HOA politics, we reveal how these dynamics teach us invaluable lessons on community-building and survival.
Tune in for an episode brimming with humor, heartfelt community insights, and survival wisdom.
Thumbnail Art by Leah
Help Mr. Guy: Zombie Hunter reach their Kickstarter goal!! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oneshipress/mr-guy-zombie-hunter-1-3-comic-anthology-trilogy-finale?ref=android_project_share
Check out Path of the Pale Rider's Kickstarter too!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pathofthepalerider/path-of-the-pale-rider-issue-5?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaajydGXWCWT9xr-5ypKB4kjdBkrzzF48RogpWCCHAn63NVjJrV5iCdbatQ_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw
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Welcome to the Zombie Book Club, the only book club where the book is a meeting in someone's front yard and we talk about our community golf course being converted into a community cannabis farm. You know what I'm talking about. I'm Dan, and when I'm not attending HOA meetings for pure enjoyment of watching drama unfold year after year, I'm writing a book about people building their own community to survive a hellish zombie nightmare.
Speaker 2:And I'm Leah, and I have a 10-year plan to be the all-powerful leader of our homeowners association, so that I can slowly transform our community into an apocalypse-proof haven. A haven, a haven, wow, for everyone. I love.
Speaker 1:I like the word haven and it's not used often enough. Interesting, you know where I'm from. There's a bar called Hillbilly.
Speaker 2:Haven. That's wonderful. There should be a haven for hillbillies. Maybe our community should be called Happy Haven instead of the thing we're not going to name right now because we don't want people to know. Today is a casual dead episode, which means we're talking about whatever the fuck we want For real this time. Whatever we want, whatever about whatever the fuck we want for real this time. Whatever we want, whatever we want um, in this case, mostly about our most recent homeowners association meeting drama and how actually this community kind of feels like a band of apocalypse survivor uh group, with all of the petty politics that would be involved in building an outpost in the wasteland yeah, so it does have a connection to zombies.
Speaker 1:It does. So if you're just tuning in, wondering what the hell this has to do with zombie books, there you go. We just explained it. Why are you still questioning us?
Speaker 2:there's also groans from the horde coming up, which includes our very last entries for the evil magic chicken zombie t-shirt giveaway. Uh, we've got a few clocks we gotta listen to and some really nice messages from some of our awesome people that are part of our community. So stay tuned for that at the end, and we release episodes every sunday, so subscribe, subscribe. Yes, dan. Um, this was supposed to be last week's episode oh my god, last half.
Speaker 1:We are horribly behind. This is actually usually when we record an episode.
Speaker 2:It comes out like three weeks to a month later.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like we were so far ahead and we talked about this a little bit in the mini, so last episode, which might be gone if you're listening to this in the future, because I don't think we're going to keep it permanent. But anyways, we were behind last week and now we're recording this mere hours before it needs to be up. So this is like the most, the most real time this podcast has ever been.
Speaker 2:It really is and, speaking of real time, because of that, we're going to take advantage of it and, before we get started, give two shout outs to two Kickstarters that I think are really worth supporting. The first is Mr Guy Zombie Hunter.
Speaker 4:Yeah From Oneshi.
Speaker 1:Press Seven days, maybe six days when this comes out tomorrow yeah, they've got to meet their goals so that we can get up I need arc three yeah we need it. I require it, need you to make it happen so that we can read it yes, also you should read it because it's super entertaining.
Speaker 2:And there's now some like new fun extras which I've been thinking about upping our um contribution, because there's now like an extra tiny miniature, mr guy, oh my god, is there? Yes, there's also you can like a print yourself, mr guy, like if you have a 3d printer, buying one tomorrow. Um, there's tarmux coffee, there's all kinds of like really awesome stuff.
Speaker 2:There's socks which I already got real tarmux coffee yes, there's actual coffee you can get as an add-on. Um, you can support it for not very much money if you just want the digital downloads, and Mr Guy's Army Hunter is new to you, but I would highly recommend actually getting the print all three if you've not started reading it yet, because it is a ride, yeah, and if you haven't listened to the episode.
Speaker 1:What's wrong with?
Speaker 2:you, lindsay and JL are amazing. From Oneshi Press.
Speaker 1:Follow them at Oneshi Press on Instagram and I think they're really cool people and I want their dreams to come true, so support their Kickstarter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we'll have them back on another episode. Just to chat about something zombies, yeah, the other Kickstarter that just launched yesterday is the Kickstarter for issue five of Path of the Pale Rider by Lori Calcaterra. I didn't know it, wasra. I did not miss it. Yeah, it was just yesterday. It was last night. We were on a date, so that's why we didn't um join for the launch, but that was the only reason, because dan and I have had no alone time for two weeks yeah, it's been.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's been chaos like longer than that yeah, it feels like the better part of a month we've been just running on fumes yeah, so we took a little time for ourselves, but you really need to go check out that.
Speaker 2:Um kickstarter, you can also get um path of the pale sauce. Hot sauce I kind of want, but I'm here for the, I'm here for all the issue. Cover variants. There are some really good ones.
Speaker 1:There's some ones that include horses that I'm pretty sure I'm gonna need to get all of them and there's also a not suitable for work, one, yeah, which I don't think you can get, but but uh, laurie did say it exists and she she might have suggested that she would send us one if we wanted to see yeah, we should, we should follow up on that.
Speaker 1:I require it. Um, and you know, talking about a path of the pale rider. Actually, this has nothing to do with path of the pale rider, but it after that episode is when this came up and uh, here's, here's, here's a little, here's a little. Not as fun life update which is I fucked up um, and I'm kind of sad about it it made me really sad.
Speaker 1:for like multiple weeks, to be honest, um, we've been making individual thumbnail art for each episode of our podcast, and I'm not going to say that I was oblivious to the AI art controversy.
Speaker 2:I was pretty oblivious.
Speaker 1:But I didn't think that it applied to thumbnails, because to me it's this throwaway thing, so I didn't really consider that by using AI to make thumbnails that I was hurting. So somebody pointed it out. They were upset. It wasn't Lori, it was somebody else.
Speaker 2:Well to be clear, lori is not pro-AI art.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, and the thing that upsets me the most is that we had Laurie on, and Laurie, makes you know, makes a visual art medium, she makes a comic, and by doing, by doing a thumbnail like this, even though I thought it was harmless at the time, it actually was potentially very harmful to Laurie because she's you know, she's an artist selling art and I didn't really think about how that would affect the person that we are trying to give our platform to an episode. Yeah, and so we've. We've changed our ways. Now Leah's drawing them.
Speaker 2:I am. I'm making a currently drawing a horde of zombies so that I have like a bank of zombies for different episodes. I'm having a lot of fun. Some listeners have given me some great ideas for zombies. The winner so far is a zombie with an evil magic chicken zombie on its shoulder. So I'll be doing that soon. I'll be doing that soon. But the other thing I want to say is, like we we first of all, I think it's important to repair and say we're sorry and acknowledge when we mess up, because we're human. And secondly, to also make note like we have removed everywhere that we can remove the old thumbnails we have. That's why you'll see a lot of episodes just missing in our grid on Instagram.
Speaker 1:And we're not going to do it again. It's a little bit trickier because it's not. It's not like an rss feed, so like I can't just change it, and the thumbnail art is basically turned into a video at that point, and I'm not gonna go back and delete all of them and, yeah, upload them.
Speaker 2:I think there's a really good cue here which is like if something feels a little icky, it's probably worth looking into like where that it comes from, because I know when dan, you started doing this, I was like this feels a little weird to me.
Speaker 1:I don't know why, because I don't know a lot about this, but it just doesn't really feel very great and as time went on, it was starting to feel a little bit more like me as, yeah, because I'd been in, I'd seen the uh, the arguments for people you know in the, in the community, people that are using AI to generate book covers and things like that. But, like I, I figured that since we're not selling, art like we're not selling anything.
Speaker 2:This is a hobby.
Speaker 1:But, um, you know, at the end of the day I was, I was wrong. So yeah, I'm changing my ways.
Speaker 2:Well, at the end of the day, it's using copyrighted images, uh, so that it's. It's already theft. Whether or not we're profiting, somebody's profiting and it's not the artist. So that's the point, and if you're somebody out there who's using AI art and also struggling with this ethical quandary, we get it. We get why you might do that, but learn from our mistake, because it could actually really hurt someone that you care about and that really sucks and leaves you sleepless at night.
Speaker 1:So don't do it and also not everybody, uh knows, knows what you know, like if if you, if you're well informed of what's going on with ai and stuff, don't assume that everybody has the same access to information, because you know, that's kind of what we ran into and people some people just didn't want to believe us because because their lives were around like being against this also very directly.
Speaker 2:They were directly impacted and the truth when it comes to harm is those who are most directly impacted are always the most aware, and that's why, when someone says to me ouch, uh, there's our dog groaning for emphasis. If someone says to me like ouch, this hurts, that's a cue, like to always just stop and listen and be like oh, I, I didn't really fully realize and, frankly, I didn't pay enough attention because it wasn't directly harming me.
Speaker 1:Um, and that's not an excuse, that's just, I think, human nature and well, my point is, though, that, like we're we're open-minded, so, like, when somebody told us that we were wrong, um, you know, I, I I decided right then, and there this has to to change. Yeah, not everybody can do that. So, like I think everybody can do it, try to inform people first, you know, don't go at them telling them that they're wrong, but, like, try to inform them and help them make the right decision.
Speaker 2:Well, this is the like calling in versus calling out, yeah, debate, which I mean there are people who deserve to be canceled. There are people who deserve to be canceled. There are people who deserve to be called out because they know, it's clear, they know and they keep doing harmful things. Um, but I'm honestly like we got what we got. We got what we deserved. I'm over it, it's fine. And we learned, yeah, and you know what? Let's move on, yeah, um.
Speaker 2:So, like I said, this has this has resulted in me going on a binge of zombie art, which I had sort of dabbled with for fun recently, but I'm not really a cartoonist, I don't do a lot of cartoons and the evil magic chicken zombie t-shirt, which I guess we do sell something, we do sell the shirt, but like, trust me, it's not the shirt. Yeah, I drew the shirt, that's true, it wasn't, it was not AI. Yeah, I drew the shirt, that's true, it wasn't, it was not AI. But I really have never drawn cartoons in any serious way and now I am getting really into it and sort of obsessive and I've made these little chibis of me and Dan that I'm really in love with and they are super cute, some really cute. I really like my little zombies.
Speaker 1:See our recent thumbnails yeah.
Speaker 2:Chibi versions of us. There'll be some more coming out soon, actually when we release slash record, because we haven't yet our Black Summer episode. But that's been my big thing. We've also just because of life and being late on podcasts right now I'm really behind on emails, so if you've emailed us and I have not gotten back to you, it's not because I don't care. It's just because we're trying to like dig ourselves out of the hole that we've put ourselves in, and one of the things that's contributing to that hole is my health issues are ongoing. I'm getting my MRI next week for my feet, um, to see what the heck is going on and if it really is good old plantar fasciitis or something else, who knows?
Speaker 1:And also, uh, you know something that we covered in the, uh, the mini, mini sode that maybe doesn't exist anymore. If this is the future, hello future, do we have cars in the ground still, or are we flying like the Jetsons? Anyway, my brother, simon, moved up here from Georgia and it was, it was. It was a nightmare when his car exploded in Virginia. Yeah, it didn't explode like in the thumbnail, like there wasn't fire it just put us.
Speaker 2:It put our whole schedule out of whack, because a whole I mean dan's only available to record on the weekends, not even weeknights, because you don't get home till pretty late and last week I was destroyed, like I was, like I was barely conscious when we recorded the minisode yeah, and one of my besties, molly, was here and I love y'all, but that had been planned for a long time, so we chose to sacrifice one week so that I could have fun and you could rest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the lesson Don't be procrastinating. But the good news with Simon being here is one he's a really awesome guy. He's a lot like Dan, which obviously I'm a dan fan. If y'all haven't figured that out, I stan dan. Um, I did marry him. Simon is similar to dan um, not as great as dan, clearly, but wonderful. And um, he's here to join our zombie commune and for the first time in two years, because of my feet, we actually have a garden in the ground, because, simon, I bought the plants. He did all the hard labor of getting it ready and into the ground and it was just like one of those moments of like community. Also, our kitchen has never been cleaner. Simon is much tidier than Dan and I Don't judge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like I do a passable job when I'm off in the winters, but like Simon comes in and just like sparkles and gleams and it's like suddenly everything has a place and everything's organized and we're like what, what is this? How did you? How did you do this? Also, we're scared.
Speaker 2:Well now I'm scared to make the kitchen messy Like it's got to stay nice for Simon. Yeah, um, and I'll be honest, like I was a little more fastidious pre-Dan. You're like, on the scale, simon is most clean, I'm in the middle, and you I love you I am the least clean, yes, and so we had to like kind of Dan, I had to meet in the middle of that spectrum. So, not going to lie, I love having Simon here.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To make our kitchen sparkle.
Speaker 1:To balance the curve. Yes, back to where you want it to be.
Speaker 2:Yes, because between simon and I, we land in the middle right, where you are yeah, and between you and me it's like on the dirtier side than I'd like, but you know there's only you. You realize some things are just not worth fighting about and also there's only crumbs on the counter.
Speaker 1:Not worth my time yes, it's true sometimes, unless there's mice involved.
Speaker 2:Oh God, let's not even get into that trauma of mice. I love mice, but not when they're in my house. So the reason I brought up Simon is because within our own little home we now have a mini commune, but we are actually part of a homeowners association, which, in this most recent meeting, is when I had this revelation where I'm like, oh my God, if I'm really politically savvy about this which my job is political I can eventually gain a lot of social capital and influence in the HOA to sort of shape it towards being the apocalypse haven that I think it could be. We have all of the ingredients for an excellent apocalyptic outpost at this HOA and at first with the HOA, when you and I learned this place was in an HOA Homeowners Association, that there's a fee involved, we were not excited. I mean, I wasn't excited, were you.
Speaker 1:Oh no, not at all. In fact, I remember standing on the porch and thinking, if the Homeowners Association comes here, I'm just going to be like we don't take kindly to Homeowners Association.
Speaker 2:Get out your shotgun.
Speaker 1:Homeowners Association came by last Tuesday. Nobody's heard from them since then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but then we read like before we bought it, we read the HOA agreement and it's pretty reasonable.
Speaker 1:It's not like one of these places where you can't paint your house yellow they might change that if we repaint our house purple, that's true, we're already thinking of ways to test the bylaws.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that doesn't exist in the bylaws. It's mostly like the HOA primarily exists to maintain the roads. Yeah, we have private roads Because we have private roads, because it's super rural Vermont and, frankly, the town won't take them over because they're too narrow and not up to code. And then we have two private ponds and a quote, unquote golf course, which we'll get into the golf course drama later, because it's really just a giant mowed lawn.
Speaker 1:Actually, the town does want to take over the roads and that's what they discussed in the HOA, but we would have to bring it up to code ourselves before they would take it over and to do that would be like $100,000. I think more.
Speaker 2:I think they said hundreds of thousands, because they're all one-way roads basically and they get really bad in the wintertime and the spring when it's mud season. But having said all of that, I wanted to talk today about how the HOA is actually a great place to practice being in community in preparation for the apocalypse and also because actually community might help us prevent an apocalypse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, it'll prevent it for your community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but before we get into the pros, pros, I'm curious what you think the cons are like when you first got here, like oh hoa, you know. I mean what was hard when we first moved here I was.
Speaker 1:You know I was. I was an on the road truck driver before that I was. I was like the poorest person on the planet, like doing everything I could just to get by on my own. So I had that rugged individualism like steeled in my mind where I'm just like everybody else can go to hell. Now that I finally have a piece of my pie.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Get off of my land, hoa, or else I'll go get my shotgun.
Speaker 2:You were verging on a don't tread on me flag. I mean not really because you're not a libertarian.
Speaker 1:I was close, though you had libertarian energy around our land yeah, and I I feel like if things, if, if I, if I didn't change in the ways that I did around the time that I did, I'd be like the government's coming to take our money and these vaccines they're got microchips. I could have gone like I was at a, at a crossroads, and I could have picked one way or the other, and that could have totally been me yeah, me too at certain points in my life.
Speaker 2:I think we're all prone to those conspiracy theories in the right moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah you know, um, while we were at the homeowners association this is just a little also to bring us back a little bit to zombies it made me think about some mechanisms that games like All Flesh Must Be Eaten, that we talked about in episode three, and something that we haven't talked about yet, the Walking Dead universe role playing game game. They have these, uh like faction rules and as you do, um, as you propose missions to go on, as you go on missions, as you argue with people like points get shifted from one faction to another based on the outcomes of things, like if you're like guys, we have to go get some canned beans, if we don't get canned beans, we'll starve. And then another faction's like yeah, but we really need medical supplies, we need to, we need to go get the medical supplies. And if you convince everybody, go on, the canned beans run you up, the canned beans run.
Speaker 1:Oh, you've watched some points and the people that are like now we don't have any medical supplies, they gain those points. And then I was thinking about that the whole time we were at the hoa and I'm like they gain those points, and I was thinking about that the whole time we were at the hoa and I'm like, hmm, you know, ring ring leader over here is losing some of these points, do you think? So? I think he did lose a little bit.
Speaker 2:We're gonna use some fictitious names to describe some of the characters in our hoa. Um, because I think it's important, because these are the kinds of politics that you will have in a zombie apocalypse community. Yeah, when I think what's interesting about humanity is like we really are designed to live in small communities actually, um, but like, then, gossip and petty politics are just a part of that uh, reality and, um, and that's one of the cons. Honestly, like I will say, sometimes it's annoying. Like I don't want to deal with people's petty politics. I don't want to deal with dana's like over the top bossiness, trying to be the boss but like no one has patience for her. Yeah, uh, I don't want to be, uh, the one who's like this is a conflict of interest, because if I said that, I would have lost a ton of social capital.
Speaker 1:We'll get into that in a minute yeah, because you don't have the social capital to make that claim and be like I'm going to point out the corruption here, because everybody will be like we all know that the corruption's here and now you're just making a big deal out of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's talk about the potential for corruption in the zombie apocalypse, hoa. So here's the drama, folks. We mentioned this golf course earlier. The golf course is 10 acres of communally owned land. That is just basically a mowed lawn with some golf course holes and flags, but it's not like a legit golf course. But the most important point of this is that no one uses it. No one golfs.
Speaker 1:Well, one person uses it. Oh, what's the name of?
Speaker 2:Benji, benji. Here's the thing about the Benji.
Speaker 1:Benji. Here's the thing about the golf course that is 10 acres. Well, half of that golf course is Benji's backyard.
Speaker 2:Yes, and Benji's been here since he was a little baby, yeah since the 70s. His parents owned the house His parents formed this zombie apocalypse haven yeah so there's like built, like we're having the meeting at Benji's house.
Speaker 2:Yes, in front of his garage he also has a lot of equipment that I believe he owns, that he uses to help with things, and he's right at the entryway. So if there was a gate there's not a gate yet in an apocalypse there would be If there was a gate at this community. His house is the first house, so he has a lot of power. You have to pass his house to get in and out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he could charge a toll.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so not only is half of the golf course his land, but also he's the chair of the Zombie Homeowners Association at Zombie.
Speaker 1:Canyon, but also on the board board he well, yeah, he's the chair of the board the board is like a shadow government within the, within the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't even know who all the people are on the board. I only know. I know him and the secretary and one other guy, because I kind of gleaned it through sitting there and listening. But here's the crux, here's the conflict of interest. Um, there is a faction in our HOA that wants to change what the golf course is used for. Some people want to make it a cannabis farm because we're technically a nonprofit.
Speaker 4:Yeah, everybody's cared for that one yes.
Speaker 2:I'm team. Somebody else wants to grow food and make it like a communal garden Also genius. Yeah. Another person wants to let it go back to being like wildflowers or just let it be nature, because quote unquote is 2024 and lawns aren't cool anymore, which I also agree with. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wildflowers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but Benji, what does Benji do beyond just being on the board?
Speaker 1:Oh well, you know, benji takes a lot of his own time and equipment and resources to maintain the golf course as well as as well as the pond Yep, and also works the road, sometimes with another board member. Also, a significant portion of the HOA's funds go to maintenance of the golf course.
Speaker 2:Yes, no-transcript back a year, yeah, which is not small, so I could use that.
Speaker 1:So Benji, who maintains the golf course and also half the golf course is his backyard, is like well, you know, it would cost more for somebody else to do it. But people aren't suggesting that somebody else do it, they're suggesting that no one does anything.
Speaker 2:Well, what he said next was if y'all don't want a golf course he didn't say y'all, that's me living in the south for 10 years, if you, if you guys if you guys don't want a golf course, then you know it's not really worth it for me to be paid to mow the uh around the pond or around the roads, so you're gonna have to find somebody else and that'll be way more expensive than 3500 just to do that part. And then everybody was like whoa shit, I guess we can't push on the on the thing. So the agreement was uh, we have a year to see how we use it, if anybody uses it, and then make a decision next year. And, um, what was boggling to me was that no one was like hey, bob's the chair of the board and he's kind of like bullying us right now around what to do with this land that's technically communal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is called a conflict of interest and being paid to maintain it. Granted, it's true that somebody else professionally maintaining that area would cost a lot more.
Speaker 2:It's his threat of removal, of even mowing anything if we don't want it to be a golf course. It's like if it's.
Speaker 1:If I don't have my golf course in my backyard, then I'm not going to mow the sides of the road or the pond yeah and good luck finding somebody who will do those areas for less than what you could go do it, dan.
Speaker 2:You could drive our little lawnmower down the road.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness about it, guys, I got it you know what, or simon could do it.
Speaker 2:I'm not on the board. It's not a conflict of interest, that's right. Okay, we have a plan now. Live here on podcast. We have a plan next year for how we're going to solve for this. We are going to say we can mow it, yeah, and we and you can pay us to mow it.
Speaker 1:We could do that for a reasonable I'll do it for for exactly the same amount as yeah, um, that's kind of brilliant.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing. I don't want to do it though this is a social capital issue where benji has a lot, not just in this scenario, but like overall he has.
Speaker 1:He has, uh, big machinery for moving around gravel for fixing the roads. Yeah, a lot of people depend on him for getting snow out of their driveway after big storms, like Dana. Dana, absolutely, despite having a very heated altercation with Benji, depends on Benji to clear out her driveway.
Speaker 2:Maybe we should remember this, that we can push a little bit, because my plan right now is to sort of be an observer mode for a couple of years and help, be a helper and then slowly gain social capital that way. But I think next year we could make a play around this. This is the fun petty politics. That isn't HOA.
Speaker 1:But you know, I feel like, especially in the position that we're in, where so many people have a lot of opinions and ideas, we don't have to do anything. We can kind of just push it and instead of being like I'll do it, we can be like, well, maybe somebody else has a lawnmower that could do it. And then somebody will be like, yeah, yeah, I'll do it. And then we don't have to do the hard work, we just suggest it and somebody else does it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like, is anybody here available and would be willing to be paid a little bit of money for that? Yeah, understanding, it would be less.
Speaker 1:Maybe waive your HOA fee. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:That's a great.
Speaker 1:Ooh, that is a great idea, but let's get back to the drama of the zombie commune.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:HOA situation.
Speaker 2:What other dramas are there in the zombie commune? Mailboxes, oh the mailbox. I don't know that this would be an actual real thing in. I feel like in the apocalypse people would be like take what you can get.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, um, but this is. You know, this is a community like the mailboxes are a community resource for communication. True, so this might be like a food rationing comparison, where maybe we don't have mail, but maybe we have ration boxes where every ration box gets a scoop of rice and that's how we manage the rations of our zombie apocalypse HOA community. Or maybe it's something else Maybe we do have mail and we have mailboxes because we're sending messages to our neighbors.
Speaker 2:Well, I think so, because it's rural, so nothing is close.
Speaker 1:But there's been a lot of talk about our mailboxes specifically ours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got a big, white, obnoxious one. Yeah, because the postmaster told me to get the biggest mailbox I could. Yeah, we got a big white, obnoxious one, yeah, cause the postmaster told me to get the biggest mailbox I could. Yeah, and then so we can put packages in it. Yeah, which let's not get into, why we can't put packages in it. But let's just say I bought the wrong one. Not only did I buy the most ugly, obnoxious giant box I could, but you actually can't put packages in it, yeah.
Speaker 1:It has a security door on it that you have to use a key, yeah, which people became immediately paranoid about, like what are they getting here? Are they afraid that we're going to steal their mail?
Speaker 2:What are they getting delivered? Is it illegal? Yeah?
Speaker 1:And you know what, in your zombie apocalypse, if you have like a pad lock on a door or something and everybody else doesn't even have a door, do people start to think that maybe you have things to hide or you think that you're distrustful of everybody else and you're blocking them?
Speaker 2:I do think paranoia breeds paranoia. We live in a community where I don't lock my door when I leave, which was an adjustment after living in the city I lived in before I don't lock my car. We will leave for two weeks and not lock our house.
Speaker 1:But I think that if you start seeing door when we're inside of it.
Speaker 2:If anybody breaks in when we're out and, uh, that's their own problem, because I'll have to deal with me yes, they will get accosted by our dog, probably, but um and we, we lock it when we're inside, because I heard once about a serial killer that came to vermont who basically their only reason for choosing to kill people was if they left their door open like unlocked. Yeah, that was how he picked victims.
Speaker 1:So because they wanted him to come in a little paranoid, a little paranoid regardless.
Speaker 2:Um, those are the kinds of petty politics you have to deal with. But there are a lot of pros. Um, of an hoa, I think, one it really is good practice for the apocalypse, because you have to make decisions together. You can't live in this illusion of individuality, because the reality is that when our culvert floods, it creates a flood for our neighbor down the hill a little bit. So we have to take care of each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also it can wash out the road, which was a discussion that was had at the HOA, is how the roads have been damaged by our floods this year. We weren't the only ones that this happened to yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:The other thing that's really awesome is, um, we're gonna make a library, or somebody suggested that we make a library for tools that we could share with each other, which is something I've wanted to do for a long time. I actually started to make a spreadsheet for it, um, and then I have ADHD, I forgot. So things like that, like communally sharing stuff, is both makes life cheaper, but it's also opting out of capitalism a little bit right. We all do not need our own vacuum. We don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, these are things to think about. If you're building an apocalypse community is like do you want everybody to have to have their own things, like their own tools, their own chair, their own, you know?
Speaker 4:whatever.
Speaker 1:Like do you have to use bottle caps to buy your Ryobi drill set, or is there just a shed that everybody can access with all your Ryobi tools in it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's up to us to decide what kind of community we want to live in. That's not just in the apocalypse, that's now. And I want to live in a community where we share our tools instead of requiring to pay for them, because it's it's for the benefit of everybody. Um, and you can make friends with a local librarian, because that's how we met um, one of our favorite people in our hoa. Yeah, liz, I'll use her name because we're not saying anything bad about her.
Speaker 2:Um let's let's talk about all the bad things about liz you know what did happen um to liz and her partner, whose name I won't name um, just because I don't want to give too much personal detail about her without her consent. I think this is real. They are frugal people and they also are not wasteful people, so they're using these very old um collapsible like lawn chairs and in an apocalypse where you can't just go to a walmart and get a new one, I think this exact scenario could happen. Uh, me, dan and liz were making friendly bets about how soon her husband would fall through the seat of his, because it was like hanging by a thread.
Speaker 2:The thing was on the verge of collapse and still is, and it's like an ongoing drama where, like I'm like, please, like, you need to bring that chair and sit in it every time, just so we can let this be an ongoing bet yeah, also, this is entertainment in in the apocalypse apocalypse so like you don't have tv, you don't have movies.
Speaker 1:Now you're like when's that chair gonna give out?
Speaker 2:and I admire that they're living that way now, instead of just going and buying the latest thing, because it's just going to end up in the landfill and in an apocalypse scenario you're not going to have the convenience of just buying the newest, shiniest chair yeah so yeah, use a chair until it breaks.
Speaker 1:That's my zombie apocalypse tip use it till it breaks yeah, or otherwise known as the way I used to live all the time when. I was poor Aw.
Speaker 2:Dan, I have some tips for living in a community in the survival, survival tips for living in a community in the apocalypse. Do you have any tips you would give to people?
Speaker 1:You know, let's hear your tips and I'll try to think of something. Number one, because I'm less prepared for this than you are.
Speaker 2:Number one observe first. This is actually um, an anishinabe, which people frequently use, the term ojibwe a piece of uh, knowledge or teaching, which is like observer first. You don't just like barge in somewhere. You take the time to like get to know a new community, get to know the people before you start trying to like change things, because you don't know why things are the way they are. You don't know who holds power or not, and the smartest thing you can do for long-term benefit and safety of yourself is to be an observer first and then help, then offer to help where you are asked or where you can see there's being a potential, before you try and take a leadership role.
Speaker 2:Power clashes happen because everybody thinks that their way is the best way and the right way, and in community places like here, the reality is that Benji's been here his whole life and we've been here for four years and he knows things we don't know, like, for example, there's a beautiful pond hidden at the back of the quote unquote. Golf course, I didn't know that. Now I know that We've been hearing about that pond forever. I could not find it.
Speaker 1:We didn't know that. Now I know that we've been hearing about that pond forever. I could not find it. I didn't know where it was. Yeah, and there are. There's two ponds. By the way, we mentioned the pond earlier. This is another pond.
Speaker 2:This is a secret pond sort of pond and it's really beautiful. So my point is is that people have been there for a while, probably do things a certain way for a reason and, uh, you might be tempted to try and change it right away, but the first thing to do is to learn the why, offer to help build some relationships and then start to gain some leadership if that feels appropriate and people like you in that way. That's what we should do anywhere we are. That's new.
Speaker 1:In the Army we had a similar approach to engagement. I don't remember the exact acronym, so somebody might call me in this. Don't ask. But first you observe, um, like you observe the enemy, you make note of, like what uniforms they're wearing, what equipment they have, what they're doing, try to identify command structure, things like that, like everything that you can observe is going to help you in the next steps, and then you report it to people and then and then you make the decision whether or not to engage. So it's kind of the same thing like if you're in the zombie apocalypse you see a bunch of zombies, don't go rushing in, gotta observe first and then report. Let somebody know what you're doing yeah, yeah also.
Speaker 2:Don't just walk up to a new community and think it's safe. Yeah, that's a bad idea too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they might be cannibals. It's very possible this community might be cannibals.
Speaker 2:I mean Dana was a little scary at first, yeah.
Speaker 1:Dana's a little unhinged.
Speaker 2:Dana watches everything we do and texts us about it, and Dana also has a lot of opinions about how things are supposed to be done. Yes, and to the point where you know some people that she was making a lot of suggestions to when some people that she was making a lot of suggestions to people doesn't know the difference between different kinds of gravel. So she's like I see this pile of gravel, why don't we just use that?
Speaker 1:blah, blah. You should put me where we should be using is down here in this mud pit, and they're like it's just gonna wash away.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't understand how road maintenance works. So, like, shut the fuck up. Yeah, she's not observing. Yeah, she's not observing, she's not asking, she's not trying to understand. And that is always clarifying conversations, what they're called. That is always where you should start before you start giving unsolicited advice or trying to wave your power around. Um, that's a big one. Also, be like us. Make a power map spreadsheet of all of the people in your HOA and what positions they have on what hot topic issues, who's aligned and who's not, so you can slowly infiltrate and possibly a Venn diagram. Yes, that's the kind of nerdy, weird shit I do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we were already identifying where the power structures overlapped who was aligned with who but also where those alliances overlapped with other alliances. Yeah, and you know I say what you will about Dana and her wildcard approach to trying to make everybody do what she says. People don't often argue with her a lot because they don't want to. They don't want to be in an argument because she's powerful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's loud and blustery.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's, she's just. She's just a thing that you don't want to have to deal with, and if you do what she says, it's less likely that you'll have to hear about it later, that's called fawning.
Speaker 2:That's a fawning trauma response. So she is trauma. Yeah, it later. That's called fawning. That's a fawning trauma response. So she is trauma, yeah, and then you can have whatever. You might fight, you might flight, you might freeze, you might fawn. Depends on what your personality is. But uh, but I'll just say like these are the things you have to deal with in a community, regardless. There's people you like, people you don't like. But if, at the end of the day, everyone is interested in taking care of each other which I do think Dana does care. They're not a sociopath. They do want the best for everybody. They're just very opinionated. Dana cares too much. Yes, dana is like somebody that I appreciate having in the community. She has helped us before and we've helped her, but I'm not going to be her bestie.
Speaker 1:That's all. I don't know if I'd want to go on a supply run with Dana. No, but dana, no, but I would want dana to go on a supply run. Yes, yes, I would want her to go on a supply run because she would, she would attack it like a pit bull. Um, she might make some mistakes, but she's, she's gonna go after what she get.
Speaker 2:Those means yeah we are on to my favorite segment of casualty episodes, which is groans from the horde.
Speaker 2:The horde is groaning, oh my god, so many groans like to admit a lot, so I'm not sure if we're going to get through all of them today. If that's the case, you will hear them on our special episode, episode 50 or maybe after, because we're playing catch-up mode. The most important groans we have to play are the evil magic chicken zombie collects the entries for our evil magic chicken zombie t-shirt giveaway. This is it. This is this is the last one.
Speaker 1:Are are we? Are we picking?
Speaker 2:no, that's episode. We're gonna do that for our 50th episode. Okay, you will know whether or not you are winning on our 50th episode and I'm gonna put everybody's phone number and email into a randomizer and then pick one.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But this is the end. So stop sending them. Well, or keep sending them, but you're not going to be eligible for the t-shirt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can send them I guess yeah.
Speaker 2:So I've got at least three, maybe four of these, so we've got to play those, okay, and then we'll save some for for next time. I'll just say briefly we had a lot of people reach out and grown some very nice things at us, like did not feel threatening at all, uh, which I appreciate because we're talking about a horde here.
Speaker 1:Could get it, could get scary, but I didn't feel like anybody too yeah, we're all zombies together.
Speaker 2:or, as all he eats brain says, we're all zombies, zombies, zombies, yeah, uh so or we're like those people in the Walking Dead that I never remember what they're called. Oh, the Whisperers, yeah the Whisperers. We're like fake zombies. I don't know, this is a bad metaphor, just you know, take it out of the episode. Sure will. I know this is going to be in there. Dan will let me randomly ramble Sometimes in there. Dan will let me randomly ramble sometimes. All right, are you ready for your first evil, magic chicken zombie click oh, I'm so ready.
Speaker 2:Um, we're gonna rank them, these ones, on a scale, just for fun, because it has nothing to do with the giveaway. What's what's our grading rubric? Uh, zeds always one to five. Okay, five is uh out of five, yes, okay you ready?
Speaker 1:Five Zed word.
Speaker 2:This one's from Eric Okay.
Speaker 1:This chicken sounds sick.
Speaker 4:It sounds kind of like surprised.
Speaker 2:That last part is like. It's definitely like found something to eat, found a living chicken or person to attack, I think this chicken had a lot to say at the hoa I think that's a four zeds. Yeah, I'll give that a solid eric. You get a four. Okay, oh, this is a survival story. We're saving that for another time. Okay, uh, here's another evil magic chicken, zombie, cluck entry from one of our Zom besties Ollie Eats Brains. Ollie, ollie, I love saying your name that way, ollie. All right, here we go.
Speaker 4:Hey, it's Ollie. I figured I should finally give a call. Long time listener, first time caller. Just wanted to share a quick story about high school and some evil magic chickens. So back in high school I did a quick study on the effects of music with animals in captivity. So, I visited a farm where they were raising evil magic chickens embellished so it's really helpful and I ran a quick poll of a thousand chickens asked who their favorite classical undead composer was. A hundred percent unanimous said Are you kidding me?
Speaker 2:That was such a good lead in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it had me going the entire, the entire time. I thought this was real. Yeah, it had me going the entire time.
Speaker 2:I thought this was real. Yeah, I don't let Dan listen to these in advance. I do as I plan for the episodes, and I heard this and Ollie immediately. Like I messaged them and I was like, ollie, we need to have you on and interview you just about your experience with evil magic chicken zombies. And interview you just about your experience with evil magic chicken zombies because, as far as I know, you're the only person, or your community is the only community, that had direct contact with evil magic chicken zombies and I think that there's an interesting thing here, like maybe bach is um, like a soothing melody for them. Maybe it helps them calm themselves from actually attacking people. I don't know. I want to know. Ollie, I think you should come and talk to us about it.
Speaker 1:Also animals like music. People don't necessarily know that, but we used to play in the barn in Canada many, many, many years ago. We used to play some music for the horses.
Speaker 2:I played music for Atlas here too, too and they love it they love music. They like atlas, like jazz or like sort of melodic music. The dogs used to love a song in particular that I won't name because it turned out that the singer was um inappropriately touching teenagers. That's always fun to find out about one of your favorite artists nero's really upset about too. Yeah, it upsetting, but his favorite song is from this guy and there was a part where Nero would always howl Really.
Speaker 2:It was really cute, yeah, but I can't listen to it anymore because I just think about how this person's kind of a you know, not a great human being, and what's so sad is that you could be thinking of millions of people right now that might fit the criteria I just said, but it's probably not the artist that I'm thinking of. But how many zeds would you give ollie? Oh, I'm gonna give ollie four, four zeds. I feel like that's very fair. We have four, two, four out of five zeds, uh, and now we have lodus. Yay, lodus, uh, lodus. Send us an email, because I think probably making a phone call to a us number is expensive I think from europe, say that yeah, so here is.
Speaker 2:Here is lotus's uh evil magic chicken zombie cluck submission yes, hello there.
Speaker 3:This is christian aka lotus. I hope both of you are well and I think it's time for me to attempt this zombie chicken cluck. And just a small disclaimer before I start. Um, I have been sitting here trying to come up with a cluck and I can't stop laughing because I think it's really, really funny. So if I break in breakdown and bear with me, because that's just part of it. Yeah, yeah, I just can't stop laughing, so this is going to be my attempt. Okay, let's go. What am I doing? Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like a chicken on a dirt bike.
Speaker 3:This is going to be on the internet. It is. Yeah, it's worse than that Lotus.
Speaker 4:this is going to be on the internet.
Speaker 3:It is, yeah, it's worse than that that was my attempt and I hope both of you are going to have a great day and all the people listening as well.
Speaker 1:Bye, christian that was so sweet it's not just going to be on the internet, it's. It's going to be in podcast form, it's on the RSS.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's on the YouTube. We're clipping this one.
Speaker 1:It's in their cars, it's in their workplaces, it's in their homes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, your internet famous in the in the horde no-transcript. Hi, brian. Yeah, and also I've been saying your name wrong. Can you say it again? Dan, you said it right zompocalypse. No lodos instead of. I've been like lodouge, let me just call you Christian.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry. Our anglophone only tongues are pitiful. I feel like it's. One of the sad parts of living in North America is so many of us only speak one language, including you and me, although I do speak un petit Francais, but very, very little as in. Don't ask me to say any more. I tried to learn Russian once. I know chicken is poulet, I think.
Speaker 1:And I didn't get very good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can you say a Russian word now? No, I know, chicken is poulet, I think, and I didn't get very. Yeah, can you say a Russian word now? No, all right, then. I just want to take a minute to read Christian's email too, because this is something else that I really see from people who speak more than one language that I wish they would know that they don't need to say this. They say their English is not their native language and I struggle sometimes with pronunciation, so sorry in advance if I stumble on words, but anyway, this is a brilliant concept and I had a lot of fun coming up with the cluck. Don't ever apologize for speaking to us in our language, please don't. No, first of all, your sentence structure is perfect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your English is better than mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is the thing that I see happen so often with people who speak multiple languages but are giving us the courtesy of speaking in the language the only one that I'm fluent in.
Speaker 1:Also, he's listening to us in a language that is not his native language, first language. Yeah, that's impressive.
Speaker 2:I could not. I can read some French, I can speak some French, but if people are talking in French at the pace that they would normally talk, I have no idea what's going on. I might pick up every 15th word which is not understanding anything. They're like oh, they said poulet chicken. I'm pretty sure poulet is chicken in French, but you know what? I don't know anything. Fact check me y'all. I would like to reiterate and remind folks again any things we say on this podcast should be fact checked, because we are not fact checking them.
Speaker 1:Nothing that we say is factual.
Speaker 2:No, or could be by accident, so we actually have one more chicken clock. I almost forgot, because it's technically an Instagram message with no audio, but I think it counts because we didn't. We didn't say it had to be audio.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure that we specified that it didn't have to be.
Speaker 2:I don't know if we specified, but we didn't specify that it had to be audio, so this counts. And also this person's awesome. Their name is CJ. Hi, cj, yeah, hi. They say insert zombie chicken noise here.
Speaker 1:Five zeds. I was going to say three, but yeah, yeah, kind of balances out. It was four Zed average. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm from the UK. That's cool. I'm CJ Big fan of the show. Just a heads up to say keep it up. I also have the foot problem. I'm so sorry that you have the foot problem and now I've spent much money on special insoles for my shoes. I also understand your pain.
Speaker 1:I have a problem.
Speaker 2:I mean the same one that leah plantar fasciitis, yeah, which I've also spent like a lot, a lot of money on at this point. Um, they said it's made a difference, but still have the pain. Yep, oh, cj you and me both I was wondering if you could do a top 20 books you have to read, or books that are unknown, or just a top 20. Also, I agree, the last series of the walking dead is as dead as the zombies themselves which are ironically not as dead as the previous seasons yeah, they're kind of sentient.
Speaker 2:It's weird. And also, while you guys were going on about mowing the grass, I was actually mowing my lawn at the same time you know, know, mowing the lawn, I get in a lot of really good podcasts.
Speaker 1:I get in a lot of really good audio books. In fact, I was just thinking this is a little bit of a sidebar, but I was just thinking that there was this one book series that I was reading while mowing the lawn, from KL Mary. And that series, like, even though I read it last year, I still think about it when I mow the lawn. Like, when I mow the lawn, that's what comes to mind. I smell the grass clippings. I'm going around the bottom part of our lawn, almost tipping the lawnmower over, and I just start thinking about like specific scenes from that book and I'm like that is my lawn mowing book the book for lawn mowing.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think everybody needs that. Uh, in other groans from the horde news, sylvester named us one of his favorite podcasts. I mean nice the writer, the infamous writer sylvester barzy, who wrote planet dead and a bunch of other really epic horror books. I actually got another one of his, which I don't know where it is right now, because our world is cluttered with books yeah, we have.
Speaker 2:We have so many books here now, yeah it's good but also challenging, because, yeah, um, we don't have enough time all the time, but this one we got. I don't even know if there's zombies in it.
Speaker 1:Maybe, sylvester, you can remind us that there's zombies in this one vampire book right yeah, that's why I got it.
Speaker 2:Let me just hold on, I'm looking it up.
Speaker 1:He did say that there were van or zombie-esque vampires in it, like more feral vampires as well as like traditional, like sentient vampires. So it does technically have zombies.
Speaker 2:I love that, even if they're not zombies by name so the book that we got was Youngblood, youngblood, yeah, so I'm really looking forward to reading that. Please check out Sylvester Barzee Also. Congratulations, sylvester Barzee, for your latest success of getting, uh, a deal to do a book, I think, called undead lovers, which is an anthology, it seems. I don't know a lot about it yet, but, uh, just the name alone I'm like undead lovers, okay, is it sexy?
Speaker 2:maybe uh, does this bring back the conversation with laurie calcaterra about, like, what's sex like with zombies? Not okay, this is starting to get weird.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what they should call Lori, for some hot tips on that and maybe involve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah, congrats Sylvester for that. I think that's really awesome. And also one of the other podcasts he named four other podcasts for his favorite podcasts is another couple's podcast called In Love With Horror. Oh yeah, and one of my goals in the next little while is to see if they want to come and do another podcast double date with us, because that was so fun with lindsey and jl yeah for mr guy zombie hunter we had a great time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um other news ollie ate half of the remaining the book we're reading for episode 55.
Speaker 1:He he ate 50 of the book oh, and then he gains the knowledge in one day. Yeah, that's how zombies.
Speaker 2:He nibbled away at each page until it was gone yeah, that's uh, that's pretty impressive. It's not a small book no, and I'm imagining that was weeks ago that you let us know that ollie, so I'm assuming you've consumed it completely he's.
Speaker 1:He said that like he read half of it one day, wow that's amazing to read the the second half the next day ollie is a fast reader.
Speaker 2:Yes, also, they made a six panel comic on our discord, so go join our discord, which dan has to figure out yeah, I got.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna add a um a code in the uh in the description area. They they're not going to allow me to make a link, so you'll just have to open Discord and put in manually the code if you want to go to our Discord.
Speaker 2:Yeah, check it out. And then, last but not least, we've got to give a shout out to Ollie, because we are currently reading. We're behind on this, like everything else, but we started reading from ollieeatsbrainscom, their maze series.
Speaker 2:I don't think there's any zombies in, but it does have zombie no, there are zombies, we're just not there yet because we had to pause it because our life's been chaos, yes, but zombies there's vampires first, then zombies are coming. I've been promised okay, I think, on part three, if I remember correctly from ollie, so we got to get there. Um, I apologize, ollie, you know we want to read it. It's one of those things. I read it loud to dan, so there's been no time for that. And then, last but not least, we've gotten so much love from people who listened to our oopsie short episode that might disappear because it was just like hey, we missed a week Cause life was chaos. Lots of folks sent us little voice messages checking in telling us that what matters is our mental and physical health.
Speaker 2:And I just want to say like that was a moment where I really felt like sense of community that we're building and that's really cool.
Speaker 1:That was. That was really nice. There's been a lot of messages, yeah, and also we've just been meeting a lot of new people, and it's great finding people that are like looking for what we're doing, like sharing what they do with us. It's been it's been a very fun and interesting time, and you know what? Before we leave, I want to give a little bit of a highlight to a book that we've been reading, and I think this is very timely Because it's June, it's Pride Month, and this book is about pride and it has zombies. It's called the Z Word.
Speaker 2:The Zed Word. The Zed Word.
Speaker 1:Actually I think it's the Z Word word.
Speaker 2:Oh, the z word. The z word. No, actually, I think it's the z word. I'm going to call it the z word. Sorry, author, my canadian self will not let me.
Speaker 1:It's okay, I'll call the z word if you request it uh, yeah, it's called the z word, not the z word at all. Uh, it's called the z word by lindsey king miller and, uh, and I, I can, I can put my, my, uh, my seal of approval. And since it's Pride Month, if you want to read a zombie book and think about Pride, it's literally about them trying to save Pride during a zombie outbreak.
Speaker 2:Also, there's a lot of hot sex. Yeah, it gets spicy, which I love, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1:There's a drag queen. There's lots of lesbians.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lesbian named Leah who is like hot and I appreciate that. I mean, they don't sound like they look a lot like me, although maybe our body type could be similar. Also, it's like super. There's like a body liberation undertone there. People are being described as beautiful that aren't like stick thin barbie models, which is really nice. Yeah, it's just overall like an excellent book. Um, we'll probably talk more about it on a future episode, hoping to have the author on to talk with them, because it's amazing, yeah I think, I think that can definitely happen soon if things line up yeah, if the writer's available.
Speaker 2:What's the writer's name? Again, lindsey king miller and I. I think you can find them on instagram at ask a queer chick. I'm just gonna double check that I think you're right, so go and follow them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's ask a queer chick all one word, packed with action, humor, sex and big gay feelings.
Speaker 2:It's real, that's the tagline it made my little gay heart fuzzy feeling uh, and it was honestly like I think we had just talked to Lindsay and JL about how it's in the first trans character at all in any zombie media. So then, to find a zombie book that actually centered the queer community and the trans community was really amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been very much, a lot like Ali eats brains. I read almost the whole thing in almost one day yeah, it's really really good there is an audiobook available yeah, this is how I got.
Speaker 2:Uh went through it fast yeah, um, and I'm slow, so I'm the slow zombie, dan's the fast zombie sometimes, and I'm in charge of emails, so they're slow. Uh, I do have one more shout out. I want to say hello to joe. Joe is an author, a zombie author, and they reached out to say uh, to give us a note of appreciation for your podcast. I just listened to your most recent episode, the 10 luxuries we'd yearn for in a zombie wasteland. It was so great. As someone who's also writing my first zombie novel. They're in their line editing stage. That's so exciting. Congratulations, joe, congrats. It's helpful to hear about your writing and thinking process and, as a vegan of 16 years wow, you got six years on me, joe uh, who has a deep appreciation for sleeping in zero g yes, yeah, team zero g I really feel like I found my people. Thanks for all you do yeah, that's.
Speaker 1:That's the Venn diagram of of zombie book club is zombie vegans who sleep in zero G.
Speaker 2:And also writers or like really good lovers of the zombie genre Something some sort of Venn diagram is those things and hopefully queer lots of us. You can be straight too. You're welcome if you're straight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, because you're straight, I'm straight, so you know if you're straight too.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. If you're straight, yeah, you know what?
Speaker 1:Because you're straight, dan, I'm straight, so you know, if you're straight too, you're in good company.
Speaker 2:Yeah, don't feel singled out, and, especially if you're straight, you should read the Z word, because I think it would be. I've, you know, been paying attention like this for a while, so nothing really shocked me, but it was.
Speaker 1:It was. It was very interesting to see a zombie story from this perspective because, uh, I think it does a really great job of humanizing the zombies. This is turning into a review yeah, we should, we'll. We'll save that for later you know the fact that, like the zombies are people from pride, like now they. They have to now kill people who look like them, who are part of their community, who they have been trying to save all along, and and it's like, yeah, that's, that's. That seems like it'd be pretty messed up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, it is messed up. Yeah, the zombie apocalypse would be, I think, in a nutshell, messed up. Yeah, well, yeah, it is messed up. Yeah, the zombie apocalypse would be, I think, in a nutshell, messed up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, a lot of zombie apocalypse mediums. The zombies are a way of dehumanizing People, people and making it okay to have a lot of bloodlust and just attacking everything with violence.
Speaker 2:And this almost humanizes it more, because now these people are sick and they are your people yeah, yeah, um, I think laurie calcaterra's path, the pill writer, also does a good job of humanizing the zombies. And also, uh, mr guy zombie hunter, because there's the zombie adoption program. Yeah right, they're cared for, they get what they need, including tofu man, and if you don't know what that is, go get yourself some mr guy zombie hunter and you'll. You don't know what that is, go get yourself some mr guy zombie hunter and you'll, you'll find an entry point. I think there's also a website zombie adoption programcom. Check it out. It's really fun. Zap, zap, uh.
Speaker 2:So this brings me to my last little announcement before we talk about our homework for episode 55, which is that, uh, dan and I've been getting a lot of really awesome inquiries from authors that are writing really cool zombie genre literature. Um, and we want to talk to as many of y'all as possible and um, the unfortunate reality is that we are not paid to read and thus have to do other things than read zombie literature if we were, I could not possibly I don't think we could keep up, yeah I I'm not a fast reader people, I'm a zombie reader.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Unless it's an audio book. I think it's a little hard for both of us with our life.
Speaker 1:I shuffle along through those words. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You're not a good like a fast reader. On a good day, I write faster than I read. So what I'm saying is we are inviting you. If you're an author and you're interested in chatting with us, you should give us a phone call at 614-699-0006. And you have up to three minutes to send us your elevator pitch about what your book's about and why you want to talk to us about it and share it with the Horde. Because we want to talk with you. It's just hard to give the justice that every single one of you deserve for us to read everything, so this is a way for us to get to know you.
Speaker 1:One thing that we're thinking about with these elevator pitch messages is like we don't have like a whole lot of time to talk at length with people about their books or get to know them in order to like to like, really dive deep into them, and this could be a segment that we do later, where we could take these voicemails and get the word out there about these books as an elevator pitch to the listener.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if we have time and the opportunity and you're interested, we could potentially interview in the future. But at least this way you know you're talking to the right people, because everybody listening clearly likes zombies, yeah, and they get a chance just to hear what you're doing. We get a chance to hear what you're doing and get to feel free, you get to know you a little bit and then who knows what could happen yeah and uh, you know what like this.
Speaker 1:That's kind of what we've always wanted from this is to like build a, a community around people who enjoy this thing, and to help people, including myself, find the audience. That is so difficult. Landscape of writing, but also indie writing and publishing and the zombie apocalypse medium on its own. It's such a small laser focus that almost nothing exists for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, for example, I wish I could remember where I saw the Z word the book we were just talking about advertised. It was a list from somebody's top 10 queer horror books for Pride Month, and that's the only reason I ever even heard about it. Right, it's because somebody else promoted it, and so that's what I want to do is like share what's out there, because sometimes you don't even know and the only way you know is if people talk about it. And I think there's a lot of amazing authors out there. We're hearing from y'all every day and we just want you to know. We appreciate you and we want to get your book out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate you and Leah does, too, from author to author, and we appreciate all the readers and the listeners and the movie watchers. We have time for that too. Um, and yeah, if you're interested in coming on the show in general, leave us a three-minute voicemail, say hi, tell us what you want to talk about. If we have the opportunity, we will invite you.
Speaker 2:And, um, we won't even make you cluck like a chicken yes, we will not anymore our next interview our next interview, um, which I will uh reveal maybe more next week about, uh, I specifically requested to do an evil magic chicken zombie cluck on air, so we will at least have it with that person, but maybe others, um. For now, though, the point is is we try and do what we can, as much as we can, for this community, and that's what it's really about for us is the community. So come say hi, I love hearing from you, and, again, we're slow. It's not you, it's us.
Speaker 4:It's not you, it's us, it's really us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so thank you for your patience. Thank you for listening. Don't forget that the remaining is the book that we are reading and talking about together for episode 55.
Speaker 1:Yeah, by DJ Mole. Yeah, ollie's already eaten half the book. He's probably eaten the whole thing at this point. And let us know, ollie, how that's coming out. Because that is, books are not meant to be ate. Ollie, I'm sorry, I have to be the one to tell you you should not be eating books.
Speaker 2:I think it could cause constipation.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm thinking. That paper is dry. It absorbs liquid.
Speaker 2:Maybe they were putting hot sauce on it or like something to give it some you know what Eat a book Marinate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Marinate. It doesn't have to be hot sauce, but you know what If it is Path of the Pale sauce?
Speaker 2:Yes, go to the Path of the Pale writer Kickstarter. Go to the path of pale writer kickstarter. Go to the mr guy zombie hunter kickstarter. Support local, not local, support indie authors and creators.
Speaker 1:This is how we build community. Sure, now, and local, yeah locals.
Speaker 2:Good, I won't tell you what to do. And again, uh, give us a phone call, 614-699-0006, or you can email us at zombie book club podcast at gmailcom. Thanks for being our zombesties.
Speaker 1:We love y'all yeah, don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. It helps us a lot. Yeah, thanks for listening again this night.
Speaker 2:From my undead heart to yours.
Speaker 1:Goodbye, bye-bye.
