Kosher Zombies & Vampires

Are zombies kosher? Or, more specifically, can zombies keep kosher? Asks a friend, the amazing comic writer Ashley-Jane Nicolaus:

Long story short, a friend of mine moved to a new place next to a really really old Jewish cemetery - so that got us thinking, if the zombie apocalypse were to happen, are brains kosher? Inquiring minds need to know...

I'm no kosher expert, but a few decades of eschewing the swine have prepped me with a little background knowledge. Not to mention thoroughly geeking out with random books of Jewish law.

So here's the deal.

You can actually eat the brains of a kosher animal. Well, some kosher animals. My mother-in-law (who, I should note, is a native Australian) LOVES cracking open fish skulls & sucking the brains out. (I'm a vegetarian & i think she does it to psyche me out. It doesn't work.)

But that's not what you want to know. If you want to know about zombies, you want to know about REAL HUMAN BRAINS. Well, humans -- or any part thereof -- is not permissible to eat, regardless of whether you're talking about kosher-keeping humans or non. (You really wish that whoever started the blood libel rumors had Google access to give them a clue.) In order for any animal to be kosher, it has to have cloven hooves and chew its cud. So basically, if you're a kosher zombie, you are screwed.

One additional consideration: Kosher vampires are screwed as well. In the process of making meat kosher, the animal's body has to be completely drained of blood. So you know how, on Buffy, when Angel and Spike became good guys (or impotent), they had to drink the blood of animals? (Just kidding. You don't actually need to know that.)* Animal blood is out, too. I suppose there's a case to be made that, when a life is at stake,** Jewish laws such as kashrut don't apply. Then again, zombies and vampires aren't technically alive, are they?

If you're curious for more, you should probably check out Are Dragons Kosher?
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* -- I believe a similar thing happened in Twilight, but I've mostly blacked it out.
** -- Notice how I avoided a pun about stakes? Joss Whedon is rolling over in his grave.***
***-- Apologies. I know Joss Whedon is not dead.

Religious Life (the Fan Video Version)

This new video has been making the rounds. It's an Internet viral video, so I'm not going to psychoanalyze it too much; I'll just say that it's a short fake trailer that takes the underlying themes of chasteness, devotion to love (or the old-fashioned, traditional-American version of it), and religious celibacy and -- well -- blatant-ifies them.

I don't get all the jokes. I don't think I'm supposed to. It's one of those things that's less ha-ha funny and more that it resonates with a specific community -- in this case, Mormons. ("You got your mission when Howard W. Hunter was president," one of those jokes, took me 15 minutes on Google to figure out completely.)

But -- as those of us who are religious fundamentalists who hang out with fundamentalists from other religions are fond of saying -- the stigma is the same. "Twilight Years" is about Mormons who don't get swept up immediately in marriage. Any kind of not-100%-kitschy viral video about 30-plus-year-olds on the Upper West Side will have a different vocabulary of inside jokes, but, done smartly and sympathetically (and with just a bit of creepiness, just to keep things honest) would look a lot like "Twilight Years," I think.

And there are some things that just transcend cultural boundaries. Like this bit of dialogue:

"How old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"How long have you been eighteen?"
"Fifteen years. Are you afraid?"

This video also led me to another Mormon web video and web-storytelling series that I'm currently obsessed with, The Book of Jer3miah. The New York Times loved Jer3miah, although that didn't directly translate into hits for them -- their second episode is still languishing with a mere 3,000 hits, miniscule for a viral video. But it's geniusly composed, exquisitely plotted, and, on top of that, done by undergraduate students at Brigham Young. Who are taking classes in new media studies. Maybe I was wrong -- maybe all religious fundamentalists aren't the same. Yeshiva University and HUC, you'd do well to start up classes like this.

Want to Join My Cult?

How geeky and sixth-grade USY nightmare does that sound?

Okay, so Facebook is collecting your private data. And it's going to use it to sell your contact information to marketers. Who didn't know that already, or at least suspect it? When any automated website asks you for your five favorite bands, it doesn't want to know in order to agonize about how cool Regina Spektor is with you. It wants to sell you other music that sounds like Regina Spektor.

I was just convinced by my friend, music recommender, and sometime Internet guru Joshua Gee to join VampireFreaks.com. It's a social networking site for goths -- yes, I fly that way sometimes, and I've got my own set of fangs to prove it -- and, over the past two years, it's been proven to be wildly popular. The advantage that Facebook has (that is, it includes everyone in the universe is also a disadvantage, and we can already see the results of it: Every time someone from one of my former lives has friended me -- or, worse, sent me a long and detailed personal message -- and it's been a person that, if it's all the same, I'd rather keep in my former life, I stay away from Facebook for a few days.

If, on the other hand, I join a website that fits with my individual identity or my musical tastes or my personal convictions (vegetarian networks, for instance), I can limit myself to associating only with people who I'm actually interested in and care what they have to say...and I'll feel like my ad money is going to people I support (in this case, goth geeks) instead of Mark Zuckerberg, who I just feel kind of gross about at this point.

In addition to VampireFreaks, there are social networks for Christians, vegetarians, and even pets. So why haven't Jewish social networks ever taken off?

A rudimentary Googling shows there's no shortage of Jewish social networks. So why isn't anyone signed up on any of them? Instead of those (shiver) USY reunions being held on Shmooze.com or JewCrew.org, there are Facebook groups for the upcoming tenth reunion of National Convention '02 with literally hundreds of members -- and you know that all those ex-teens getting together is just going to inspire another round of old photo albums, bomber shots, and messy hook-up sessions, followed by another ten years of practiced Facebook avoidance.

Is that the real reason that Jews don't join Jewish social networks -- because they're so small, you might actually have to run into someone?

For my own part, I'll save my Jewish networking for the same user-platform my parents are on -- the local synagogue -- and use social networking for the things that I really need computers for, like writing protest letters to congressmen and finding new music. In the meantime, if anyone comes looking, I'll be on Vampire Freaks. Want to join my cult?

G-dcast: Acharei Mot

OK, you asked for it -- this week's G-dcast. Zombies, vampires, incest, and a special Lode Runner cameo.